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Saturday 6th December - Full report

russ

By russ
in Observing - Reports

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russ

russ

Posted
Posted

Setup early around 2pm. Dragged out both scopes and was also hoping for the 20x80's but they didn't arrive. Also without a good medium power eyepiece as the UWAN 16mm hasn't arrived yet either. So a Skywatcher 20mm had to make do. Very keen to use the Speers-Waler 5-8mm zoom for the first time in the 12.5.

Started the night off at 5pm with views of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter. I couldn't use the 12.5 on Jupiter as it had just crept out of view.

Moon - ED80 - Beautifully sharp view with lots of detail. Just lacked the impact of the 12.5 view.

SF12.5 - If the ED80 was excellent, the 12.5 was mesmerising. The view was a notch or two above the ED80. Incredibly sharp with incredible image scale. Effortlessly handling higher magnification. I spent 30mins just cruising through my fav bits of the moon.

Venus - Showed an equal image in both scopes. The usual Venus multicoloured view. A nice 50% approx phase. Boy is it bright!

Jupiter - The ED80 did really well on Jupiter. In the brief moments of decent seeing there were multiple bands on show. And all four moons strung out to one side. It;s amazing just how much can still be seen on Jupiter despite its incredibly bad placement in the sky.

Interlude - 5 hours in the Beefeater, 12oz Sirloin steak, Chorizo and Chicken starter, Chocolate brownie pud........yum yum yum!!

Back on track at 11.30pm. And onto the deepsky. The moon had moved to the west and the sky was quite dark to the East. Terrific range of constellations to work my way through.

Orion - Decided to checkout M42 with both the ED80 and 12.5. The ED80 view wasn't bad. No probs with the Trapezium and basic shape to the nebulosity. Nothing to blow your socks of though.

The 12.5 was WOW! Oh boy what a difference. Stunning detail in the nebulosity. And the Ultrablock only improved things further.

Decided to pack away the ED80 at this point. It's a great scope and proved it's worth on the Moon and Jupiter.

Next constellation - Ursa Major

M51 - Unfortunately this end of Ursa Major was too low and not good for poor old M51. No probs finding it and the view was still better than i had ever seen it in the 8" but i know the 12.5 will do a lot better once M51 gains some altitude.

M63 - Just east of M51 in the sky was M63. Normally find this incredibly easy to find but not tonight. Took me a good 2-3mins to find it. And no wonder, the low altitude was not doing it any favours. At least i could tick it off.

M101 - Like M51 it was too low. I did find it....just!

M109 - A little higher than the other two but still fainter than i remember.

M97/M108 - working northwards through Ursa Major i came to my highlight of the night. A real contrasting pair and in the same field a knockout sight indeed. I couldn't the see the eyes in M97 but it's distint round shape was obvious. While M108 looked a fainter version of M82. Like an idiot i forgot to use any filter.....doh!

M81/M82 - My fav target in the sky, although upstaged tonight by M97/M108. Both were very bright. Just see the split in M82 and NGC3077 was just outside the fov.

Auriga - won't bore you with all the details but toured all the open clusters, didn't disappoint, never does.

Taurus - M45 was stunning, the main stars incredibly bright in the dob.M1 was easy to find and much easier to see than my last observing session in Novemeber.

Gemini - The Eskimo Nebula took some finding. But well worth it. It's tiny in a low powered eyepiece. Should have used a medium power to find it.

Back to M42, couldn't resist. Oh wow that looks so good!

Finally Saturn had risen high enough to be worth a punt. I dragged out the ED80 again and used both scopes.ED80 view was again very nice. Nice sharp disk and a nice pencil line drawn through the planet which was the rings. 12.5 view was much better. Too bright at low power but once a bit of magnication was applied the planet came to life. Could see the slight tilt in the rings, not just a pencil thin line like the ED80. Also see some banding and plenty of moons. Awesome! What a finish to the night.

Regards

Russ

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