A quick observing session 21/09/21

[lunator]

The sky was looking ok last night. I knew the Moon would be washing things out later but as other members of the house would be watching bake off I thought I could get a hour or so observing in. 

1st stop Saturn. Seeing quite poor so a quick look then move on hoping things would improve later.

Next stop was Jupiter. 3 moons on one side and the GRS just visible on the limb but disappearing fast. 42/44/45 Cap made a nice line almost perpendicular to the moons. Seeing wasn’t great so I decided to move on again.

I decided to look at RS Ophuchi. It was as faint or possibly fainter than HD 162499 (9.81) in the 12.5mm it is being to take averted vision to see. I would estimate mag 9.8-9.9.

Moving onto V1405 Cassiopeia. First look confused me for a moment as it was bright. I stared at it for a while and was certain that it was pretty much the same brightness as HD 220819 (6.61) so I estimated Mag 6.6. The Nova is not stopping yet.:) .

The seeing appeared to have improved so I went back to Saturn. The view was much better this time with the Cassini division visible at x100 and Titan quite obvious.

Continuing my circuit I went back to Jupiter, at x100 the bands were clearly visible when the seeing settled. Despite Jupiter’s fairly low altitude I have had some fairly decent views recently.

I had set up in a slightly different part of the garden, just in front of the observatory. This meant I had a better South view than usual so I had a look at SkySafari and thought I would try for a couple of new objects I can’t normally see. 

M2 and the Saturn Nebula were my targets. Both fairly bright so would hopefully cut through the haze and moon glow.

I started at Enif and moved to M15 just to ‘get my eye in’ in the 25mm (x16) there was a clear smudge within a triangle of stars. 

Tracking south about ¾ of the way to 22Aqr I found M2 a Globular Cluster slightly smaller and fainter than M15. The bright stars HD206058 (6.65) and HD205765 (6.21) point towards it. 

Moving down to 22 aqr and then across to Mu and epsilon Aqr gets you in the right area. If you draw a line from Mu aqr and double that distance you come to Nu Aqr. It you just move just a bit back towards 7 Aqr you will have the Saturn Nebula in the field of view. At x16 it looked like a small faint blob with a hint of blue. 

By now the Moon was fully up and washing things out so I decided to end the session. I plan to return to the Saturn Nebula to get a better look.

Cheers
Ian 
 

[Epick Crom]

Nice report Ian. The Saturn Nebula is a stunning planetary, it looks greenish to me. Enjoyed reading your report!

[Captain Scarlet]

Nice read.

Saturn Nebula on my list. I’m pretty sure it’s been on a few of my lists but my observing is not terribly well organized and I have yet to see it.

M

[Nik271]

Autumn is a good time to observe the Saturn nebula, it crosses the meridian around 10pm but it's never very high from the UK: only about 27 degrees in altitude at best.

I found it easily last night and at 180x it looked great, pale creamy ellipse, it does resemble Saturn viewed n a department store telescope and very bad seeing

 

[lunator]

I had another better look last night, using the ST80.

Using x100 mag did begin to bring out the shape more.

It is nice to see stuff which I can't see from my observatory.

Cheers

Ian