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A proper session at last!

F15Rules

By F15Rules
in Observing - Reports

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F15Rules

F15Rules

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Having had 3 weeks of cloud in August followed by a busy early Sept domestically and then 5 days away in a hotel surrounded by lights (!), I was pleasantly surprised when we got home late yesterday afternoon to see that blue skies had broken out - and the forecast was for some clear spells last night.

So I decanted "Trinity", my FS128 Tak, from her Oklop holdall and installed her back on the Tak EM2 mount.

I decided to have a spin with 1.25" only EPs, including:

Vixen LVs 5, 10, 20mm

Vixen LV zoom 8-24mm and Carton Zoom 7-21mm

Morpheus 9mm (dual barrel 1.25"/2" fit)

Baader 2.25x Hyperion zoom

Session ran from 10.20pm til 11.55pm. Conditions were good seeing, fair transparency (slight haze plus waxing 2/3 moon meant no Milky Way was visible). Humidity was very high, as it has been in our area for weeks. This meant that a heavy dew began to form very soon after I started observing, but although my RACI finder did steam up, the main scope objective stayed clear.

I observed the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, and Iota Cassiopeiae, the Triple system recently discussed on John's thread "What Refractors do best".

The Moon. I'd been prompted to check out "The Moon Maiden, a light-shadow phenomenon in Sinus Iridum", which was going to be visible last night, see below (with full acknowledgement to Stephan/Nyctimene)..

The Moon Maiden, a light-shadow phenomenon in Sinus Iridum, will be visible again this evening:

post-4175-14074237761238_thumb.jpg

I was intrigued by this and found it quite readily, handily placed on the terminator. Here's a (rather poor) shot I took on my Android phone..if you expand the view you should be able to make out the outline of the Maiden's hair, face and neck along the bottom centre of the photo..an interesting diversion/phenomenon.

Next up was Jupiter. I always find Juoe very sensitive to seeing conditions, and rarely can I get much over 130x from my observing site without the image getting very soft.

Last night was better, and I saw 3 main moons strung out to the south east of the planet (I assume the 4th was behind Jupiter itself?)

The disk at 148x (Carton zoom at 7mm) was nicely defined, with 5/6 belts, and some real colour variances from creamy white to pinkish to mid brown.

I then moved to Saturn, always a beautiful sight and better able to take more magnification in most conditions. This time was no exception, and although much fainter to the naked eye than Jupiter, it presented a very sharp image with the Cassini Division very obvious on each side of the rings, and a single band evident on the planetary disk. Titan completed a lovely vista which was framed beautifully in the Morpheus 9mm/2.25x Barlow combination at 260x, even though the planet wasn't very high up. 

Finally, to Iota Cassiopeiae, a new to me triple (my thanks to John for his recent thread "What Refractors do best" on this forum a few days back). This thread prompted me to look up this interesting triple system, and it is surely everything that John enthused about. Suffice to say that I got a wonderful view at 260x of this showpiece system in good seeing conditions, with just a single, quite steady diffraction ring around the primary, and the two companion stars very sharp points of light.

It's sessions like this that rekindle enthusiasm after long periods of inactivity, and I now consider my batteries well and truly recharged!

Thanks for reading 😊.

Dave

IMG_20210916_224713286.jpg

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Stu

Stu

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Great session to get back into it Dave! It has been slim pickings for most of us I think. I wanted to try for the Moon maiden too after @Nyctimene highlighted it but no luck.

Great to see colour on Jupiter. It’s weird, when I first started observing I swore that I could only see it as mono, but now see all the colours and shades others talk about. Perhaps just experience, not sure, but it certainly has a good range of them.

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Sunshine

Sunshine

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41 minutes ago, F15Rules said:

The Matrix trilogy is IMHO one of the best movie series ever..you should watch them..and Trinity...well, she was just a babe back in the day!😊

I find that Tak and Morpheus make an unbeatable combination!👍😂

Dave

I beg to differ, with me it ends after the first, as usual part one’s of many films are masterpieces but, it usually goes downhill after (Alien and Terminator) exempted.

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Stardaze

Stardaze

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Nice report Dave. I too must look into the moon really, I glance, but I have little knowledge about of much of it.

I also fell foul of the high humidity Friday night. Left the dob cooling with an EP in, which I never normally do - it quickly clouded over. First time I’ve added a dew strap to an EP. 

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