A Fun's night observing.

[Ciaran Meier]

Had a bit of a "binge" last night, got into the flow and couldn't quit.  Two scopes on the go, both un-driven, 8 inch/F6 OOUK Newt and a 102mm/F10 frac: 6mm. 12mm and 25mm Vixen EP's 

The frac on Venus as soon a visible in twilight.  Lovely, lovely, lovely in the 12mm EP. 

 

All further observations with the Newt.

Auriga:

Double: Capella.  A F  0.1m/10.2m  @ 106" sep.  Faint companion following along.  Seeing blue in the secondary.

Double: Epsilon Aur (7 Aur).  A E  3.0m/9.6m  @  206 sep.  AF  3.0m/11.0m @ 221".  Nice arrangement in the 6mm EP.

Double: Beta Aur  (34 Aur). Menkalinan.  AB 1.9m/10.9m  @ 187" sep.  Pi Aur. (35 Aur) Caught my eye in the finder, nice punchy red.  Checked out some data and discovered a very interesting fact regarding Theta, Beta and Delta Aur also.  Pi Aur is in alignment along the "solstitial colure" along with Theta, Beta and Delta Aur.  I'll need to read up on this later.

Double: STF653 (14 Aur).  A B  5.0m/10.9m @ 10.1" sep.  Seeing a hint of blue in the secondary. 

Double: STF698.  A B  6.7m/8.3m @ 31" sep.  Lovely colours in this pair.

Double: STF872.  A B 6.9m/7.4m @ 11.8" sep. Really pretty matched colours, kind of an "orangey" yellow.

Open Cluster: NGC1893, (COL63, MEL33). Tick.

Open Cluster: NGC2281, (COLL116, MEL51).  A nice sparse spattering of stars.  Best in the 12mm.  In 6mm can see two sets of doubles at approx 5" sep mag 10/11.  Better sight than M38 earlier this evening.

 

Leo:

Galaxy: NGC2903 at 9.0 mag.  Very difficult to spot, just a slight signal from the background noise.

Galaxy: M94 at 8.0 mag.  Best in the 12mm. Bright central smudge with some outer smudging swimming in and out of view.

 

Canes Venatici:

Double:  Cor Caroli (12 CVn).  2.9m 5.5m @ 19.2" sep.   First time seeing this.  Yep, lives up to the hype.  Two white diamonds, this is what it's about.

Double. 15/17 Cvn.  Wide double.  A B  6.0m/6.3m @ 275".  Third unassociated 8 mag star forms nice triange.

Galaxy. M63 at 9.0 mag.  No detail, no apparent brightening. Just a homogenous smudge.

Galaxy. M106 at 8.2 mag.  Smudge.

Galaxy. M51 at 8.5 mag. Two faint smudges with barely discernible central concentrations.

 

Bootes:

Double. Theta Boo (23 Boo).  4.1m/11.5m @ 70" sep.

Double. Iota Boo (21 Boo).  A B  4.8m/7.4m  @ 32" sep.  Nice one.

Double. Kappa Boo (17 Boo).  A B 4.5m/6.6m @ 13.5" sep.  Another lovely double.  Iota and Kappa can be seen as together in the 25mm EP, very nice indeed.

 

Coma Berenices:

Globular Cluster.  M53 at 7.7mag.  Just a fuzzy, no break down to stars.

Galaxy: M64 at 8.4 mag. Fuzzy smudge.

Hercules:

Globular Cluster: M13 at 5.8 mag.  Finish on high note.

 

Called it quits at 4:30am. 

Had a lot of fun and satisfaction manually tracking these down from my Bortle 7/8 sky.  I know a lot of observers are using GOTO these days but for me a lot of the enjoyment is working with the 15x70 bins in tandem with the finder to track these down.  It can get a bit frustrating when almost on target then lose bearings and back to the last known reference point. All good fun in the end however,😀.

 

Keep safe and enjoy this run of clear skies.

Ciaran 

 

 

 

Edited April 17, 2020 by Ciaran Meier
Typo

[JeremyS]

Great report @Ciaran Meier. Thanks!

[domstar]

Sound like a wonderful night. I wanted to look at doubles last night but the stars were fuzzy so I had a lovely time in amongst the Virgo galaxies. First time there this year. Kudos to you for staying up so late. My willpower drains like a cheap battery so 2 hours is a mammoth session for me.

[wookie1965]

Nice haul there some really nice doubles.