Tuesday 16th March - Ursa Major and Leo with an ST80

[MercianDabbler]

I was busy on a Zoom call until around 8:30PM but the forecast showed some time with clear skies. I stuck my head out and saw around 50% clear sky so I decided to pop out with the ST80 and just see what was on offer since I've had way too much cloud so far during the current period of moon free nights.

It didn't start well - rounding up the gear and clothing was quick but I had 100% cover by the time I was ready. The clouds were scooting across the sky pretty quickly so I decided to wait it out and experiment with the tripod a bit. This evening I tried out tilting the top of the ball head over at 90 degrees. This prevents the head keeling over in unwanted directions when it is unclamped for altitude movement but puts the scope tube closer to the tripod legs. For the most part it wasn't actually hitting the legs though.

Some gaps started to appear and I was able to make out Ursa Major by eye and get the scope aimed at Mizar. From there I was able to star hop using the TV 32mm Plossl to the vicinity of M101. Could I see it? Maybe. Certainly I could not be 100% confident. The most likely suspects were through the 15mm SLV and 9mm DeLite - crisper views through the SLV but probably a better chance with the DeLite but it seems to me to be a lot trickier to get the focus right with the ST80 and 9mm DeLite combination.

The logical next target was M51, a fairly easy star hop from Alkaid. I was less convinced that I could see this one though so decided to move on and push my tripod setup by exploring the area of M108 which was practically overhead. By using the vertical extension on the tripod I was able to gain some extra clearance to allow the tube to point nearly vertically and get Merak into view and get the eyepiece at a reasonable height to use from a chair. Steering was pretty awkward at that elevation, more in terms of figuring out whether I needed to move in azimuth or altitude and in which direction rather than any problem actually doing it. Stellarium on the tablet showed far fewer recognisable stars for hopping in this part of the sky so I was using the 10x50 binoculars to figure out the general geography and then trying to find the same stars through the 32mm Plossl. With this combination I was able to get to the right field for M108 and the Owl Nebula. I could not see either of them.

By now time was marching on so I decided to finish off with Leo. I lifted and shifted the whole setup to avoid a silver birch and got lined up on Zosma. Through the 10x50s I could not make out the two fainter stars below it so I was a little unsure but the ST80 showed them straight away and removed any doubt. Stellarium kept flashing up the label for Vesta so it seemed rude not to have a look. No problem seeing it, I just needed to check with Stellarium to be sure which of the three objects of similar brightness was the right one. Finally I moved down to the area of the Leo Triplet to see what the ST80 could manage there. No problem navigating this area but the best I could claim was a suspicion of M66.

Time to pack up. Once I switched on the head torch I found that the beam was very visible so there was a slight mist in the air by then. Not a hugely successful evening in terms of targets seen but the ST80 is hardly the ideal galaxy spotting vehicle for city skies. I enjoyed being out for a couple of hours though and the clouds had mostly stopped getting in the way so no regrets. The tilted over way of using the ball head worked well. I could almost say that the head has ceased to be the annoyance that it was when I first started using it with the ST80.

EDIT: I meant to thank @Tiny Clanger for the tip about tilting the tripod head over... so... Thanks!

Edited March 17, 2021 by MercianDabbler
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