Superb seeing for Izar and M13

[RobertI]

Popping my head outside at 10:30pm revealed a beautifully transparent sky. Having work the next day meant a quick session was in order. Unable to find my binocular I quickly set up the 102ED-R atop the Skytee 2 for a quick squint. Completely unprepared, I had nothing listed, so went to a couple some well known favourites.

Izar was beautiful and easily split at 160x. Seeing was really excellent (not a breath of wind either) so I upped the magnification to 200x and the stars remained tight with lovely unbroken diffraction ring. The pair looked wonderful with the tiny white 'cub' sticking close to its yellow parent. Out of interest I zoomed out to see the lowest magnification where I could still split it - I reckon I could still just see a black line at 100x.   

M13 was climbing in the East, so I had a play with different magnifications. At 200x a lot of stars were resolved in the core and outer regions, but were quite dim. Zooming out resulted in a smaller and brighter cluster but also a brighter sky. I think x80 was about the ideal combination of object brightness, sky darkness and star visibility.

Surprisingly I spent an hour on just these two objects. Wish I could have stayed out longer.   

[Stardaze]

Still, an hour in great conditions is far better than several in poor conditions 😁 Nice combo there, fancy something like that at some point myself.