Unexpected late September session

[Pixies]

All forecasts were showing cloud except the Met Office, but the latter was correct. I set up the dob to observe the shadow transit of Io, but the seeing was very poor and I couldn't clearly see the shadow as the sharp inky dot we had a few weeks ago. Typically though, the seeing improved just as the shadow reached the western limb of the planet.

So, with the scope at the wrong end of the garden, I thought I'd have a shot at a few different targets and see what I found. The transparency wasn't great but seeing improving all the time.

I started on Almach to align the finder. It's double nature not visible in the finder but even at just 50x in the scope, its gorgeous colours and split were clear. I think I prefer this over Albireo with it's tighter split.

M31 and M32 - check! Still there. M110 not visible

NGC 891 - Edge-on galaxy. Nope, not visible either with the poor transparency. This looks like a good target for darker nights, but I wonder how well it'll appear in my backyard. At least it's in the darkest direction.

NGC 956 - A sparse open cluster. Not that impressive, really. Perhaps not the best view tonight.

NGC 772 - Spiral galaxy. Another wash-out, unsurprisingly. Again, I wonder if this is possible from the garden or requires a dark sky trip

NGC 752 - More like it! A large open cluster. Filling the view in the 30mm Aero ED, about 1.5deg. I need to try this in the binos

Uranus - easily found forming an arrow between 2 mag 6-ish stars including omicron Ari. Pale cyan disk from 100x upwards.

 

High cloud was now rolling in and it was getting a little chilly, so I called it a night. I think Almach was the highlight. Not sure I've ever observed it with a scope before.

 

Edited September 30, 2021 by Pixies

[JeremyS]

Nice evening 👍🏻

[lunator]

Nice report 🙂

In my experience Almach is a good large scope double. Albireo looks best in a small scope.

Cheers

Ian

[Stardaze]

Ah, not tried Almach either. I’ll try that next time too. 

[Spile]

Almach is probably my favourite coloured double.