Waiting for Mercury......

[Stu]

I’m just warming up and chillaxing after what was a pretty fabulous night. It started off with a group of six of us meeting up at our local site to enjoy the Moon, Jupiter and Saturn; socially distanced of course and unfortunately not able to share scopes for obvious reasons. I had my Vixen Fluorite with me on the GP mount, and although the seeing was pretty wobbly, I enjoyed the views, particularly of GRS which was transitting. When the seeing steadied there was some good detail to be seen, including a couple of large festoons. I had a quick look at Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) and found it fairly easily, a shadow of its former self but still there!

I left the group at about 12.30am and had about an hour or so sleep before the alarm at 2.30am for my seven planet challenge!  I did manage to drag myself out of bed and up on to the local heath, complete with binoculars and the Tak (a lot more portable than the Vixen). I had the Gitzo tripod and Scopetech Zero Mount, it’s all a one handed carry with the tripod/mount on top of the scope case. My pockets were stuffed with three eyepieces (24mm Panoptic, Leica Zoom and 3 to 6mm Nagler Zoom) and a 9x50 finder to help me find Uranus and Neptune.

When I arrived at my observing site, Jupiter and Saturn were low down in the SW, but still easily visible. Mars was higher up at about 30 degrees and Venus was shining brightly low down in the NE. A promising start, four naked eye planets already.

Setup was pretty quick, and by about 2.45am or so I was observing Jupiter and Saturn again! The views were fairly ropey due to the low altitude, but Saturn’s rings were clear, and the point of the exercise was to get a scope on all seven planets, I wasn’t expecting the best views of each.

Next up Mars, again not the best view but hints of a polar cap and some dark markings. Hoping for much better come October!

Venus showed a clear phase, shining brightly away, and I would return to it later on once it was higher.

Neptune was the next challenge. I was grateful for the RACI finder as the skies were obviously quite bright and locating the stars for a hop was not so easy. Anyway, I started at Markab and found the wonky pentagon of stars at the end of Pisces. From Kappa Piscium I hopped down to Neptune quite quickly, and then spent some time comparing star fields using SkySafari to make sure I had the correct location. Neptune was fairly faint, but when I upped the power it was clearly a tiny disk, faintly blue coloured. Not dramatic by any means, but number five ticked off.

Uranus was always going to be easier, and so it proved. I started at Hamal and hopped down quite easily. Uranus is significantly brighter than Neptune (Mag 5.8 vs Mag 7.8), and showed a lovely little disk at high power which was greyish green to my eye, though more grey than green!

So, six down (seven including the Earth of course) and one to go. Mercury was due to rise at 3.53 so I had a little time to look at the Pleiades, M31 and the Double Cluster, and to just enjoy the clear skies and sounds of the night. Plenty of croaking going on which I assume was frogs or toads! I forget what time I picked Mercury up, some time after 4am, probably 4.15 ish. I found it in the finder first, and then got the scope on it. Initially it was in amongst some low cloud on the horizon, but cleared that and by 25 past it was visible with the naked eye. It wouldn’t take any real power, but still showed a clear disk despite being so low. The phase wasn’t that obvious to be honest but I know it is showing at 2/3rds illuminated currently.

I watched it until it was at about 4 degrees or so, then began to pack up and headed home. The horizon was brightening ahead of the sunrise and the dawn chorus was in full swing by then, a really lovely and peaceful time to be out.

So, having highlighted the challenge in the first place, I’m chuffed that I managed to complete it myself. Seven planets in one continuous session (Magnus told me it was cheating if I had a sleep in between them!), all seen through the scope and binoculars, and the five bright naked eye planets seen.... well, with the naked eye too!  Through the evening and early on in the morning session I saw a number of quite bright meteors which I enjoyed too.

A selection of the better images are attached, including one of Mercury through the scope.

A grand night, who needs sleep!

[Littleguy80]

Fantastic, Stu! A well deserved success and a really enjoyable write up. Hope you’re enjoying a good sleep in  

[Captain Scarlet]

Superb, quite jealous. I love the pic with Venus and the Pleiades, and, if I'm not mistaken, Mercury? just below the slow-mo extension. Enjoy the coffees!

Magnus

[Stu]

1 hour ago, Captain Magenta said:

Superb, quite jealous. I love the pic with Venus and the Pleiades, and, if I'm not mistaken, Mercury? just below the slow-mo extension. Enjoy the coffees!

Magnus

Thanks Magnus. Yes, ‘‘twas a good night.

The Pleiades looked great and captured surprisingly well in the image. However, that image was taken before Mercury had risen, and even after it had, I couldn’t manage to capture it in widefield shots, only through the scope.

[markse68]

poor old forgotten Pluto 😢😉

Congrats though Stu- real staying power and perfect night for it

Mark

[Stardaze]

Great effort indeed! Not sure I have the stamina for it!

[Stu]

2 hours ago, markse68 said:

poor old forgotten Pluto 😢😉

Congrats though Stu- real staying power and perfect night for it

Mark

I did have a kind of wistful look at where Pluto is! I’ve never been in a location with a big enough scope to have a go at it.