The Moon, Jupiter and Saturn with a couple of Novae and doubles 17/09

[lunator]

The skies were looking ok last night. I thought I would try and get a couple more observations in on the Novae. 

I set up the ST80 on the photo tripod. Conditions weren’t brilliant, there was still some cloud around and although the moon was low behind some houses it was still washing out a large part of the sky.

1st stop Saturn just to check finder scope alignment etc. It was easily found in the 25mm (x16). At higher mags the image was “swimming” it was like looking through running water. Un-deterred I decided to head 1st to RS Ophuchi.

RS Ophuchi – Found it ok in the 25mm but needed 12.5mm (x32) to see more clearly. 
RS Ophuchi brightness was between HD162215 (9.68) and HD162449 (9.81) so I estimated Mag 9.7. A small drop from the 15th.

Next stop was V1405 Cass or as I like to call it “the (almost) eternal novae”
Nova Cass appears to have faded slightly. It’s brightness is similar to HD220770 (7.82) and noticeably fainter than HD220819 (6.61). I estimated the mag at 7.6.

I though I would try Jupiter as it had cleared the houses and fortunately the seeing had improved quite alot. It was still worse than the 15th but I could see some reasonable detail in moments of good seeing.

3 of the Moons were visible and when I check Sky Safari it was Io, Europa and Ganymede. On closer inspection I realised Callisto was crossing the face of Jupiter and I decided to track how quickly I would be able to spot Callisto leaving the limb. Given the seeing I wasn’t sure how well this would go.
Callisto 
21.29.10sec. 1st detection
21.32.46sec clear detection in moments of good seeing.
21.36.00 sec continuously detectable but still appeared attached to the limb
21.39.30sec. appeared fully resolved.

The Moon was now visible between the houses. Using the 4mm (x100) I got fairly decent views of Gassendi. 

My final stop was M57.
Using the 25mm I could view both Gamma and Beta Lyrae (STFA 39) M57 and the wide double SHJ282AC appear as a yellow/blue pair. 
Replicating this view should be possible in decent binoculars.
 

Cheers

Ian