Another cracking night in prospect

[AstroNebulee]

1 hour ago, John said:

Very crisp moon here. 454x with the 12 inch dob. Alpine Valley rille and 6/7 Plato craterlets, possibly more. Hadley Rille really well defined. Highlight at the moment are the Rimae Hippalus. Three concentric rilles and a faint 4th one, running for around 190 km:

Beautiful image John, the moon was looking amazing tonight, lovely capture of the 3 Riles, I pushed the imaging mag on my skymax 127 tonight to get in close but nowhere as good as yours. 👍

[John]

21 minutes ago, LeeHore7 said:

Beautiful image John, the moon was looking amazing tonight, lovely capture of the 3 Riles, I pushed the imaging mag on my skymax 127 tonight to get in close but nowhere as good as yours. 👍

Thanks, but it's not my image (I rarely take any)

That one was from the Lunar Orbiter IV I think. I should have given a credit for it.

[Pixies]

 

33 minutes ago, LeeHore7 said:

 I pushed the imaging mag on my skymax 127 tonight to get in close but nowhere as good as yours. 👍

You'll need to spend some more cash!

 

5 minutes ago, John said:

That one was from the Lunar Orbiter IV I think. 

Perhaps not that much cash!

 

[AstroNebulee]

35 minutes ago, John said:

Thanks, but it's not my image (I rarely take any)

That one was from the Lunar Orbiter IV I think. I should have given a credit for it.

Shhh John, take the credit 😉

[Saganite]

2 hours ago, John said:

Very crisp moon here. 454x with the 12 inch dob. Alpine Valley rille and 6/7 Plato craterlets, possibly more. Hadley Rille really well defined. Highlight at the moment are the Rimae Hippalus. Three concentric rilles and a faint 4th one, running for around 190 km:

Sky is still very clear but I think that is enough for tonight. Not a lot to show for 5 hours, I don't know where the time went but  apart from getting the E&F stars , splits of Alnitak, Mintaka, Rigel, Sigma Orionis, Castor, the star clusters of Auriga and The double Cluster, I seem to have spent most of my time flying low over the Lunar surface. The highest I pushed the 12" was 254x  which showed me a crisp Hadley Rille but I could get only 4 Plato craterlets.  After reading your post I thought I would have a go at that sort of power and to my amazement it was still sharp.  I am pretty certain  though that my optical train is lacking somehow because  my star tests all night, even with the fan running were not good at all, hairy would be an understatement. 

[Marki]

Started off well early evening but the seeing seemed to get worse, albeit steady. Moon light scattering everywhere, and transparency deteriorated with thin haze in waves rolling in from abut 11pm. Gave up around midnight.

Spent some time on the moon, which was excellent, and had some fun double-hunting nonetheless, including some new ones for me such as Iota Cancri, Beta Mon, 57 Cancri, 38 Gem and some others. But couldn't split Rigel, and couldn't split Tegmine and couldn't see either or E or F in the Trapezium. Spent a fair bit of time with the SW150ED and starting to form some clearer views on that which I'll post elsewhere. Anyway, always better to be out under the sky without wall to wall clouds :).

 

[Pixies]

The seeing was the best I'd witnessed since I started back in May last year. The sky was clear, the earlier high clouds/haze had gone and I went out a bit later than I expected.

I started with the Trapezium cluster, thinking I stood a chance finding F for the first time. However, I had left it too late and Orion had drifted over a nearby house and the heat currents made it hard to clearly see the Trapezium itself, let alone E or F. 

So I moved to Cancer for the 3 things I had planned to observe tonight. M67 was disappointing, the light from the moon washed out the fainter stars and any colour differences had gone too. So next I went to Iota Cancri. This was great - like a mini winter Albireo. The largest star a warm yellow and its smaller companion steely blue. Then the main event - Tegmine (or Tegmen, or Tegmeni, or Zeta Cancri). Found it and thought - nice easy split at x80, what's the fuss about! Then realised that was the distant pairing and the southern-most star was the close double. Using the zoom, I went down to x150 but no luck. So added a barlow and at x300 something was happening but not exactly a split. So I swapped over to my 4mm ortho (still x300) and after a lot of staring and nudging, started to make out the split. Hardly a clean split, but there were seperate airy disks and the very steady seeing meant I could differentiate the two sharing a diffraction ring between them.

I've put a sketch up on the sketching forum.

Anyway, after that I decided to bite the bullet and went for the moon. Again, up to x300 easily with the good seeing! I could make out textures and gentle ridges over the mare near the terminator. I'm not familiar with the moon to be able to describe the location correctly. I'll need to do some research. But the steadiest views of the moon I've had.

I could get used to this!

Edited January 24, 2021 by Pixies

[AstroNebulee]

Great report pixies I'm pleased you finally got out after doing your online shop. You certainly collected a fair few doubles and a good tour of Luna, the seeing was excellent last night with the clear cold weather, I hope your equipment survived the cold well, clear skies 

[Carl Au]

Excellent report. Northern Lincolnshire was clear for 3 or 4 hours I was out last night. Glad you had a good session.

[Les Ewan]

I was out from 10pm until 5am.The Moon was the main  target in the late evening then in the early hours I had a few great views of double triple stars using my 16" Dob. Usually clear frosty nights are too unstable for the closer binaries but last night there was sub arc second seeing with the main star of Tegmine Zeta 1 easily resolvable using a 9mm Orthoscopic  and 2X barlow giving a power of 400X. I think the reason for the good seeing is the thick blanket of snow cover preventing the usually ruinous thermals from radiating,something I've noticed before in such conditions..After the Moon went down the sky darkened enough to catch The Ghost Of Jupiter and few Spring galaxies.😎

[Nik271]

4 minutes ago, Les Ewan said:

I was out from 10pm until 5am.

Wow, that is serious observing! I can't last more than a couple of hours in subzero temperatures., and my Mak eventually succumbs to the dew.  

The seeing was mediocre here, I just could not get anything steady above 200x. But had great views of the Moon. 

[AstroNebulee]

22 hours ago, John said:

Very crisp moon here. 454x with the 12 inch dob. Alpine Valley rille and 6/7 Plato craterlets, possibly more. Hadley Rille really well defined. Highlight at the moment are the Rimae Hippalus. Three concentric rilles and a faint 4th one, running for around 190 km:

On further investigation, I managed to get them last night John 

[JamesF]

Clear sky forecast for here tonight, at least until 11pm.  However, a clear sky has been forecast all day too and we've had 75% cloud since about 10am

James

[John]

2 minutes ago, JamesF said:

Clear sky forecast for here tonight, at least until 11pm.  However, a clear sky has been forecast all day too and we've had 75% cloud since about 10am

James

It's sort of a mixed forecast here tonight. Nice morning but clouded up now. Light clouds though.

Might get some time at an eyepiece with a refractor later if we get some clear spells.

 

[Tiny Clanger]

Here it has been sunny all day, but not got above freezing for long, so still plenty of lying snow. Clouds have appeared as twilight approaches, but the BBC weather promises they will be gone by 7pm and the rest of the night will be clear  ... think I'll be having an unusually  early evening meal soon in hopes of enjoying my third frosty observing night in a row, 🙂

[JamesF]

Hmmm.  It looks like I might be going to have one of those evenings where the forecast says "clear" right up until it's no longer a "forecast" and then it says "cloudy" for that hour, as if someone at the Met Office had just looked out of the window...

James

[John]

[Saganite]

What looks like another cracking sky means my 4th outing in 5 nights which can't be bad !

Tonight the third of my three scopes gets a go, the 5" f15, on the AZ100  and pier.

Edited January 25, 2021 by Saganite

[Captain Scarlet]

4 minutes ago, Saganite said:

... 4th outing in 5 nights which can't be bad !

By the time I get to that stage I’m praying for clouds 💤 

[John]

Quite a bit of hazy cloud around here currently. I've put the Tak FC100 out anyway although it hardly needs any cooling time.

 

[JamesF]

4 minutes ago, Captain Magenta said:

By the time I get to that stage I’m praying for clouds 💤 

I remember one year when we had seven clear nights on the trot here.  My body was screaming to be allowed to get more sleep by the end of it :D

James

[JamesF]

Just had a peek outside.  We have probably 90% cloud cover at the moment.  There's what looks to be clearer sky to the north west, but I'm not sure it's heading in this direction.  I guess that will become obvious fairly shortly.

James

[VNA]

Hello:

If you stop talking about the weather, it may after all go away! ;- )

But then again?

[Tiny Clanger]

18 minutes ago, VNA said:

Hello:

If you stop talking about the weather, it may after all go away! ;- )

But then again?

We are British . Weather and queuing are in our genes  🙂

[John]

It's quite nice here just now. How long it will last, we just don't know ! (said in best Sir Patrick Moore voice )