Pushing my luck????

[Kimboman]

Hi there's an inkling that we may have some clear Skys tonight so I thought I would set up two of my scopes in case a miracle happens .

I hope this is not a bad omen but if you don't try lots of gear languishes for another night cheers.

[John]

You might as well go for it !

[Mr Spock]

Same here. There's quite a bit of wispy high cloud but I'm putting the scope out anyway. Given the thick cloud I've had for weeks any time at the eyepiece is a bonus.

[IB20]

Absolutely set both up. I did last night and it was great, whilst my bigger dob cooled I used the smaller refractor. Perfect. 

 

[John]

I've got the 130 triplet refractor out cooling. I rarely use more than one scope during a session though, despite having a few knocking around

The night of the opposition of Mars last year was an exception though:

 

[JeremyS]

CCD is cooling, but thin high stuff has come in. 

Will probably put my 0.06m refractor out later.

Approximately 10 nanosecond cooldown time

Edited August 28, 2021 by JeremyS

[Mr Spock]

The sky is a milky grey colour and seeing is poor.

I did have a few minutes on ε Lyr. At x300 amidst the constant wobbling I did get some nice airy disks. At x171 I can just see the 12.6m star between them. That's how bright the background is.

At x133 M13 has some nice detail, spoiled somewhat by the lack of a dark background. 

[John]

Similar milkyness here but it's better towards the zenith. I'm concentrating on double stars currently, which are showing quite well.

[Mr Spock]

There's milky, and there's this...

LEDs are wonderful aren't they. I really want the orange ones back 

You can see I'm looking at Saturn. Mushy but at x171 I can just about make out a belt and the Cassini division.

[Stardaze]

Not as steady tonight. Managed to see Lo transiting across Jupiter and 5 moons around Saturn but brief glimpses of crispness and better at lower mag.

[John]

I found 200x worked pretty well on both Jupiter and Saturn tonight. Usually Saturn benefits from a little more magnification than Jupiter but not tonight.

 

[Zermelo]

It's been good here. Only a little cloud around, and that cleared quickly. The sky was impressively dark before the moon showed; the great rift was quite obvious. Managed to get quite a mixed bag with the Mak, some open and globular clusters, a couple of planetaries, a few new doubles, Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. Although the seeing wasn't quite as good as when I was out last Wednesday, Jupiter's belts seemed slightly better (and I saw Io's shadow quite clearly).

[Voyager 3]

7 hours ago, JeremyS said:

CCD is cooling, but thin high stuff has come in. 

Will probably put my 0.06m refractor out later.

Approximately 10 nanosecond cooldown time

Noooo ! It is 0.00000001 second cool down time  .

Edited August 29, 2021 by Voyager 3