Enjoyable night of observing

[Mark at Beaufort]

In the thread  'Anyone playing tonight' I listed some hopeful targets with the 12" Dob which I had set up late afternoon.

I wanted to try and observe Sirius and the Pup whilst still in twilight especially as 'seeing' was forecast as excellent on some websites. Well Sirius was not being helpful and I failed to see the Pup. Next with the 6mm Ethos still in the focuser I viewed Venus - lovely sight although I could not make out any cloud markings.

There has been a few recent posts on the star 'Tegmine' in Cancer. I must admit that I have never viewed this star system before so I was hopeful with the 6mm Ethos (253x) that it would be a lovely sight. Well it was and I was able to split the system into 3 stars although the Primary was very tight.

Now astro dark I moved the scope to observe the difficult galaxy IC342 (Caldwell 5). I started the star hop from Kemble's Cascade which was a delightful view in the Altair 80mm finderscope. Whilst there I viewed the lovely cluster NGC 1502.  IC342 is an easy star hop from the Cascade using the Interstellarum star atlas. This galaxy is faint but with averted viewing I believe I could detect a faint glow although I think this was just the nucleus.

I knew the Comet - C/2019 Y4 (Atlas) was not too far away so I star hopped from Muscida (Ursa Major) having first viewed M81 and M82. The Comet was close to stars 43 and 42 in Camelopardalis but I had problems at first finding it. Eventually I viewed it with the 13mm Ethos but it was fainter.

Moved down the last of my pre-arranged targets NGC 2403 (Caldwell 7). Now this is an excellent galaxy to observe which I first saw in April 2010 at the SGL5 star party

I ended my observing (still in shorts) with Leo viewing NGC2903 and the Triplet.

 

[John]

Nice report Mark

I'm glad you enjoyed Tegmine - it's become a favourite of mine this season

 

[Paul73]

NGC2403 now on my observing list!

Thanks

Paul

[Mark at Beaufort]

27 minutes ago, John said:

Nice report Mark

I'm glad you enjoyed Tegmine - it's become a favourite of mine this season

 

John - Whilst viewing Tegmine last night I just wondered what it would be like in a quality 4" APO. Perhaps one day I will find out. 

[Captain Scarlet]

Likewise I “did” Tegmine last night, prompted by your mention of it. On my 300p with 6mm it was fairly clear the one was more like a line at 45degrees than a single star. With my 3.5mm at 430x it was an obvious split. 

[John]

25 minutes ago, Mark at Beaufort said:

John - Whilst viewing Tegmine last night I just wondered what it would be like in a quality 4" APO. Perhaps one day I will find out. 

So far Mark, I've found it pretty tough to split with my Tak 100mm if the seeing is not top notch (an apt term where double stars are concerned !). With the ED120 and 130mm triplet the split is somewhat easier.

At 1.1 arc seconds the tighter pair are very close if not on the resolution limit with 100mm of aperture.

 

 

[Jiggy 67]

Tegmine is beautiful, spent some time with it last week but I was only able to split it to a double Though I don’t think I realized it was a triple at the time so didn’t max the magnification...damn and blast!!..there will be other attempts