Blown Away II

[RobertI]

Another gusty night, but transparent with moderately dark skies. I cooled the 150P with my newly installed fan on full blast for an hour, then turned it down to minimum speed and began the festvities at 10pm. Seeing was pretty bad as usual, but by the time I finished at 1am, had improved a lot.

Bit of a mix tonight starting with some doubles:

• Iota Cancri - a beautiful double, the 'Winter Alberio' with yellow primary and blue/grey secondary.
• Zeta Cancri  (Tegmine) - A triple with splits of 6" and 1.1". Recently discussed in another thread so thought I would have a go and was pleasantly surprised to be able to split the close pair quite easily at x240, despite the bad seeing, although there were moments when the gap was not clearly visible.

  A couple of carbon stars:

• X Cancri, a lovely rusty orange colour.
• 'La Superba' in Canes Venatici, a beautiful deep fiery orange.

Although the sky seemed quite bright, I thought I'd try some galaxies, and was very pleasantly surprised. Mostly observed at 57x:

• A triplet of M65, M66 and NGC3628 in Leo all visible in the FOV - a thrilling sight. M65 and M66 both pointing in the same direction and very easily seen with bright cores. NGC3628 much fainter, long and thin with not much of a core.
• NGC6307 and 3608 lay nearby,  both fainter and without any discernable shape or bright core.
• M51 in Ursa Major was very bright, with two bright nuclei and extensive nebulosity apparent.
• Over to the more challenging M101, but suprisingly easily found, a large but faint pale diffuse disc.
• Finally M64 the Blackeye Galaxy. Very bright and compact, I really wasn't sure whether the black eye should be visible in a small scope, and I really tried, but with no luck. I upped the magnification to 120x to darken the sky, and the galaxy was more apparent, but I really couldn't see a black mark. By this point I was also using an observing hood and eyepatch! 😄

Overall a nice session and I was very pleased with the scope's performance on galaxies.

As for the fan, I did try comparing views of Tegmine with the fan on and off, but could not see a difference. I suspect this may be of more use on planetary and lunar, or under different conditions (perhaps less windy).  

No sketches tonight, too windy!

Edited March 1, 2020 by RobertI

[Chris]

I'm impressed that you could see all those galaxies so brilliantly from urban skies. The best reward I've ever managed was the cores of M51 with a C8 Edge! Got to love them carbon stars, I could stare at them for ages. Sounds like you're really enjoying the 150pl, great report

 

[domstar]

Sounds like a great session- beautiful doubles and galaxies. The Hamburger has been a real challenge for me and I'm looking forward to renewing the battle. Never tried a carbon star. I have to get onto it.

[Stu]

Excellent session Robert, the scope is clearly performing very well. I had a similar doubles session recently which I really enjoyed, though my skies arent dark enough to get the views you had of galaxies unfortunately.

[RobertI]

Thanks for the comments @Lockie, @domstar and @Stu  I was really surprised that the galaxies popped out so well as the skies didn’t seem that dark, both naked eye and through the eyepiece, but transparency must have been pretty good somehow. It did make me realise what a difference a really dark sky could make to viewing galaxy detail. I didn’t realise the ngc3628 was the hamburger - do you think that the dark line could be visible in a 6” Newt under my skies?