Excellent seeing tonight

[John]

Having setup my 130mm refractor for a photo shoot this afternoon I was pleasantly surprised when the skies cleared as evening approached despite a forecast of 50-70% clouds.

While the transparency is rather mediocre ( eg: comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas was quite hard to spot despite being billed as mag 7.9) the seeing seems very good.

The Moon and Venus put on a great show earlier and then I was able to split Sirius at 240x and 300x while there was still some light in the sky. The faint glimmer that is the Pup star became somewhat more tricky to see once the sky was dark though.

Revisited Tegmine (Zeta Cancri) with the 130mm refractor and this triple star looked truly spectacular. Having the 2mm-4mm Nagler zoom in the diagonal I could press on the power and, my gosh, the stars stayed so well composed and crisp right up to 600x ! The close pair here are around 1 arc second apart and that thin black gap was clearly defined by the 5.1 inch objective lens.

I played the same game with the easy pair of Castor and found a pair of bright headlights blazing back at me with a large gap between them at the top end power.

Over to Cassiopeia for an up close view of another of my favourite multiple stars, Iota. Another superb grouping framed by the field stop and looking sharp and tight again at those very high magnifications. 

Using this sort of magnification and with such well defined star images you can see very subtle differences in the tint and brightness of these tightly grouped stars which tend to look very similar at lower powers.

The two long slow motion control cables of the T-Rex alt-azimuth mount gave smooth and precise control even at these crazy magnifications and the mount handles the F/9 130mm triplet scope so well. Virtually no vibration at all and any that crops up when focus is adjusted damps down in under a second. At last I'm able to really push these excellent Russian optics hard

Hercules is still quite low but even so I've managed to split Zeta in that constellation and I'll be back for more when the constellation has risen higher.

Some nights I love to go to those distant faint fuzzies with my 12 inch dob but other nights, conditions allowing, the smaller but precise optics of a quality refractor deliver these text book views of binary star systems that are a sheer pleasure to observe

 

 

 

[Ciaran Meier]

36 minutes ago, John said:

I was pleasantly surprised when the skies cleared as evening approached despite a forecast of 50-70% clouds.

The forecast has certainly been hit and miss lately.  The usually quite accurate  Met Office forecast has been somewhat unreliable.  However,  as you mention, seeing is good. Last night I thought the same. 

Nice session and sounds like you got the most from that 130 refractor. 

 

[Littleguy80]

Very nice report, John. It’s the endless variety that keeps us coming back for more. I didn’t really have a plan for this evening as I wasn’t expecting it to be clear. Had a little fun taking some time lapse pictures of the ISS passing over. Grabbed a look at Comet C/2019 Y1 which is low down in Cassiopeia but I was able to pick out fairly easily with the dob. After that it was a bit of a planetary nebula session. Ghost of Jupiter (NGC3242), Green Turtle Nebula (NGC6210) and White Eyed Pea Nebula (IC4593). Finished up with M13 before it all got a bit damp. Also saw the bright galaxy NGC3521 in Leo along the way. These unexpected sessions often end up being amongst the most enjoyable. 

What was the photo shoot with your refractor you mentioned at the start of your report?

[John]

42 minutes ago, Littleguy80 said:

...What was the photo shoot with your refractor you mentioned at the start of your report?

Here Neil:

 

[markse68]

1 hour ago, John said:

and then I was able to split Sirius at 240x and 300x while there was still some light in the sky. The faint glimmer that is the Pup star became somewhat more tricky to see once the sky was dark though.

I caught a glimpse of the pup again I think  tonight but not as steadily as the other night but the moon was again magnificent so all good 😊

[Stu]

Lovely stuff John, sounds like a cracking night with a wonderful scope! It is hard to beat the star presentation in a top notch frac!

Seeing wasn’t as good here unfortunately, but I still managed some wonderful lunar views. Popped the 8” f8 out to dig into those Treisnecker Rilles. Lovely stuff, had forgotten how many there are!

[Jiggy 67]

Nice report. I had a go at Tegmine the other night but could only resolve it to a double at x250 mag. I gave up there but maybe I should have gone further....