Observing report 27/04/2021

[badhex]

Hello all,

I think this is the first observing report I've done, so apologies that it's not as detailed and advanced as many!

 

When a rare cloudless evening presented itself, and although I'm normally not a fan of observing the full moon, I decided I'd like to perhaps spend some time on the so-called supermoon for a change. I also used opportunity to test a recently acquired 26mm 0.965 Swift Kellner, and as it is still cold in the evenings, my new "Heat Holder" fingerless gloves.

I had a window of around an hour and a quarter between 2145 and 2300, and had already set up my Celestron Travelscope 70 + AZ-GTi to cool on the balcony earlier in the evening in anticipation. When the time came, it was a quick lift to move the scope and mount in one hand, EP case in the other, up to the shared terrace on top of my building. Only a few mins to set up and pack away shaved off either end of the session, the main reason for choosing this scope given the time allotted.

The skies where I live in Berlin are a frustrating Bortle 8 which makes faint targets a challenge even with goto, but for the most part the roof is free of any major local light sources, so I make the best of it. Both seeing and transparency were good to very good for the duration.

After a quick north-level alignment of the scope I planned to pick out a couple of targets from the 'Tonight's best' feature in the Synscan Pro app and  spend ~45 mins on those, and the last 10-15 minutes on the eye-busting moon.

 

Mars

Mars was the last of my alignment targets, and although it is plummeting away from us, I can usually resolve the disc fairly well even at low mags in this scope. I spent a short time with the 10mm BCO at 40x but it was not overly impressive. I suspect some of the chimneys nearby may have been disturbing the air column.

 

M13 - Great cluster in Hercules

Always a favourite! Through this modest scope under these skies, M13 is little more than a tiny grey splodge at first glance but deserves time at the eyepiece to pick out more detail. Whilst The 17.5mm Morpheus only gives 23x which is quite small for M13, the LP meant I started to lose too much brightness, so I mostly stayed with this EP. The crisp view from the Morpheus certainly helps, and after a few minutes I could start to pick out some detail in the cluster. I always feel that with clusters like M13 the longer you look, the more you see.

 

M44 Beehive cluster

Open clusters like this and M45 are where this scope and the Morpheus really excel. I spent a good time picking out detail, panning a little around and looking for previously unresolved features and stars.
I then switched to the cheap and cheerful - but IMO surprisingly good - 25mm Celestron Plössl that came with another scope, and got used to the view at 16x as a baseline for my next test.

Switching to the 26mm 0.965 Swift Kellner I had forgotten just how narrow the actual eyepiece was! After a few minutes of trying not to poke my eye out, I settled into a workable position and was rewarded with a surprisingly crisp view at 15x across the whole FOV. The experience is a little odd; with none of the protection from peripheral vision which modern EPs offer, the image was basically floating in front of me - but despite the narrow FOV the image did fill the barrel and was by no means unpleasant. The Beehive looked as good, image wise, as it did in the Plössl, but unfortunately it was not as comfortable an experience.

 

NGC6811 Hole in a cluster

New target for me. As I don't know it, I suspect I did not know what to look for or was using the wrong magnification (the Morpheus again at 23x). I did not spend long with this target, so more research needed before another visit.

 

Moon

Finally the moon. As expected the experience was nearly blinding and I was immediately reminded why I don't like viewing the full moon. After a few minutes getting used to the sheer amount of photons hitting my eye, the whole moon fits easily into the Baader's FOV and was completely crisp across the whole field. I am constantly surprised how good this scope is for the money, and saw very little fringing - a barely perceptible fluorescent green line, with no violet on the other side. I switched up to the 10mm to study a little of the moons edges. I'm very much a moon novice so do not know the names of the features I was studying (moon atlas on the way!) but I could see many central uplifts in the craters along the moons edge. Overall though, I will wait for less illuminated phases to start my journey on the Lunar 100.

At this point it was time to finish up for the night, but the last thing to mention was the gloves. I must admit that I found them to be a total delight - almost full dexterity, and aside from the obvious cold fingers my hands were the perfect temperature for the entire session.

 

Thanks for reading!
Joe

 

Edited April 28, 2021 by badhex

[Nik271]

This is a very nice report, thank you! A big city sky presents unique challenges, I did some stargazing from London for a few weeks last year and can relate to your situation.

You've covered a good range of targets for a 70mm scope in Bortle 8 sky. I can recommend using some kind of filter for full Moon (natural density or try even sunglasses).

There are some features which show best in full moon: the subtle shading of  various maria or craters' ray systems for example.

Here is a useful resource for the names of various Moon features https://quickmap.lroc.asu.edu/

 

[Captain Scarlet]

Nice read thank you. Thanks for pointing me to NGC 6811, I’ll take a look for the “hole” myself too.

BTW you might want to change the date in your title to April 🙂

Cheers, Magnus

 

[badhex]

53 minutes ago, Captain Magenta said:

BTW you might want to change the date in your title to April 🙂

Haha thanks, hadn't noticed! Fixed

[badhex]

1 hour ago, Nik271 said:

This is a very nice report, thank you! A big city sky presents unique challenges, I did some stargazing from London for a few weeks last year and can relate to your situation

Thanks! Yes, I lived in London for 10 years before here, and I had hoped Berlin might be less challenging, but alas. Still, we do what we can!