Giving the new to me scope a whirl

[wookie1965]

I have been given a Celestron C-102 from a very good friend and been waiting for a good night to try it last night it all came together.

Still suffering with my back it was to be a shortish session, I had put the scope out earlier a lot lighter than even my Tal. 11pm son gets my stuff out luckily I have one of those  right-angled sight tubes that fits on the polar scope so no getting down on my knees for that.

First off wanted to try the optics where better than Lyra.

Double double easily split both pairs with a 10mm  x100

M57 with a Oiii filter at x66 look spectacular.

Aquilla

11 (SAO 1043 08)   With mags of 5.3 and 9.3 with a separation of 19.6" you could be forgiven as not seeing the double but there it is yellow primary with a tiny ash coloured secondary. Haas says ashy blue but with a 125mm.

15 (SAO 1429 96) mags of 5.5 and 7.0 with a separation of 39.1"  cracking pair at x66 loads of colour grapefruit with lilac companion.

28 (SAO 1044 72) with mags of 5.5 and 9.0 with a separation of 59.7" the surprising thing here this looks like the double double Off white primary with tiny grey companion.  Hass says the secondary is blue but that is with a 125mm scope.

57 (SAO 1438 99) Mags 5.7 and 6.3 with a separation of 35.9"  x66 pair of stars mildly unequal as Hass says I saw twins.

Cygnus

NGC 6910 (Rocking Horse cluster)  Cracking cluster which does resemble a rocking horse.

NGC 6811 (Hole in the cluster)  With only the 4" out this was not as discernible as with a larger scope I have seen this a load better when I had my 8" reflector so I wasnt that disappointed.

NGC 6819 (Powdered glass cluster) Again not too disappointed even with plenty of mag this wasnt as good as I have seen it I will try with the 127mm but as above I think to do it justice you need a larger scope.

16 (SAO0318 98) Mags 6.0 and 6.2 with a separation of 39.1" these really are twins same colour and nearly identical mags, sunflower yellow.

26 (SAO 0490 98) Mags of 5.2 and 8.9 with a separation of 41.4"  at x40 to me another Albireo yellow and blue.

52 (SAO 0704 67) Mags of 4.2 and 8.7 separation of 6.4" with my 11mm Televue plossl I could see  pale orange and greyish blue stars.

61 (SAO 0709 19) Piazzi`s flying star Mags 5.3 and 6.1 with a separation of 31.1" both stars are yellow Orange. 

61 Cygni was a prime candidate for distance measurement due to its large proper motion. Italian Catholic priest, mathematician and astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi first measured this, in 1804. He studied the star over a period of 10 years and realised it was moving faster than any known star at that time. Christened the "Flying Star", Piazzi's measurements initially gained little attention until Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel published an article in 1812.

The method used to measure the distance of nearby stars is parallax, which involves using the Earth's orbit as a baseline. A star's positioned is accurately measured twice, 6 months apart, and then it's distance can be calculated from the angular displacement using trigonometry.

In the 1830's, there was intense competition between astronomers to be the first to measure a stellar parallax. In 1838, Bessel won the race announcing 61 Cygni had a parallax of 0.3136 arc seconds, corresponding to a distance from Earth of 10.4 light-years. He narrowly beat Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve and Thomas Henderson, who measured the parallaxes of Vega and Alpha Centauri respectively. In addition, Besel's calculation was remarkably accurate and a testament to his observation skills. For comparison, modern measurements place the star at 11.36 light-years distant. 

I was going to pack up then noticed Saturn between the houses behind me so had to look at it and wow one of the best views I have had in a couple of years with the 11mm Televue plossl it was the sharpest  I have seen it the Cassini division was seen as were a couple of moons I was delighted, more magnification just smoothed out the edges so stuck with the 11mm.

Son came out and packed up for me well the heavy bits which I am grateful for this was 12.20 am I had been up since 4.30 am the previous morning and as I write this I have been up since 5.45am pain waking me up its no fun but at least I can still get out there and look up.

Paul

 

 

[mapstar]

Nice bit of viewing there Paul. Glad your new glass is giving you the wows.