Saturday 9th Jan... On Again Off Again

[MercianDabbler]

Maybe more of a cloud, frost and dew report than an observing report but here goes...

When I looked midweek CO was forecasting wall to wall 'green' for me for Saturday night.

I'd been out on Wednesday trying to capture some more frames of M33 but discovered the need for some dew control. Wednesday's captured frames just about showed M33 but really were not much use other than as a 'learning experience'. Not having the time or inclination to wait for anything to be delivered I decided to cobble a dew band together with leftover bits scavenged from various hiding places.

By Saturday morning the forecast had reduced to just an hour of 'green' either side of midnight. I decided to put the SP102 up in the garden near the house to test my dew band, firstly without any power to make sure that the objective was collecting dew before applying power.

The evening started cloudy with some wind so annoyingly no dew was forming so I cooked dinner and watched a film with the Mrs and went out again at 8:30 to find a clear sky and frost forming on the tube. On trying to connect up the dew band one of the wires snapped off so it was back inside for a quick repair with a bit better attention paid to supporting the weight of the flex.

Back outside I took the tube off the mount and shifted everything down the garden to my usual observing spot. I struggled with the polar scope - on the first attempt everything was OK but after making some adjustments and looking again I could no longer see the lines on the reticle. I decided this was probably dew (after all the mount had been outdoors for several hours) and did my best guess based on remembering how the reticle had looked on the first attempt. Usually I do polar alignment straight after bringing the mount from indoors so that seems like a better move in future.

Some high cloud started looming into view from the north west. Between that and the uncertain polar alignment I decided to abandon any attempts at M33 for the time being and stick to visual work.

I'm also getting used to my new Rigel finder so tried this out by aiming at the Pleiades and found the main scope aimed correctly when I looked through the EP. With the cloud continuing to loom it wasn't worth spending more time there. Orion was the best bet for staying clear for the longest time but by then the nebula was obscured by a tree branch.

I decided to have a poke around the top end of Orion and looking at Stellarium discovered that Meissa was double and had some nice looking alignments of other stars nearby so I went straight there using the Rigel finder again. Another Christmas pressie was a 15mm Vixen SLV eyepiece and with this I was able to split Meissa. My 10mm bundled Skywatcher Plossl and 5mm Starguider could also do it but the view of it in the Starguider was all a bit thin and wobbly. I then went longer and switched to my 26mm Meade (Kowa) S4000 and was pleased to see that this could also do the split as well as showing plenty of the surrounding stars. I really like this EP - I've had it since the late 1980s and never really knew much else for a long time. Finally I tried a 32mm TeleVue Plossl - to my eyes this showed an elongated star.

Since I was in the area I tried Sirius but that was just a mess of shimmering colours in every EP I tried. It's a pretty futile exercise with my kit anyway but sometimes I do futile.

By this time Casseopeia had cleared so I decided to have a try at M52. No joy at all. I lined up on Ceph and initially intended to try star hopping but I could not reconcile what I was seeing with what Stellarium showed. I checked several times that I was on the correct star and then tried with the setting circles. By this time my head torch was on the blink and the red LED would only stay lit for 5 seconds or so... which wasn't exactly helping. Eventually I got the circles to the right point but I could not see anything cluster-like in any of the EPs I tried, nor again could I reconcile the view with Stellarium. I tried again by going back to Ceph and doing the circles again but the results were the same. Oh well, another night maybe.

By now the sky was looking pretty clear all over but it was really getting too late for me to start attempting any AP. I checked the objective before packing up and found that my dew band had partially worked but there was a circle of condensation in the middle so some more work is needed to get a bit more heat to where it's needed... and the condensation probably wasn't helping me with M52 either.

Some care was required to avoid my hands becoming attached to the tube when carrying it back indoors.

Forecast clear for Tuesday so I shall be refining the dew band tonight.

[faulksy]

nice report mercian. you had a few problems but you got through it. the dew heater will eventually clear your glass but best putting it on before dew sets.

prevention is better than cure

[bish]

I bought dew strips and a hair dryer after making the mistake of turning up to a star party without dew control.

[MercianDabbler]

Thanks both. I uprated the dew band and made some of the hastily done fixings more sturdy ready for the... ahem... 'clear skies' last Tuesday. I was ready. Unfortunately the skies weren't. In future it will be powered up from the get-go but when testing it I wanted to be sure that there was some actual dew for it to clear.