Quick Session

[Stardaze]

I've only managed to grab the odd few minutes with the Bino's this last couple of weeks, with work being so busy too but I've been itching to have a hunt around Andromeda with the dob this year. So with that in mind and the possibility of an hour or two without clouds, I set the dob up just after dark.

The first half hour was spent watching Ganymede's transit across Jupiter. The seeing wasn't too bad at all at first but then the cloud rolled in, which was an hour overdue according to CO. I decided to grab a brew and get the dew kit working as it seemed pretty damp already. 

Around 9.30 the cloud had moved on and so I got myself acquainted with Almach to fine tune everything. At this time, Almach was only just above the tree next door and so I must have spent a good while letting my eyes slowly adapt. 

Andromeda needed quite a bit of breathing space and so I changed back down to the 13mm (98x) and settled in. M110 was clear, sat just inside the field stop. I couldn't discern the full shape of M31, very spread out and M32 was completely lost in the haze. I'm still to resolve this fuzzy from the garden which led me on to M33, another galaxy that has evaded me too. The sky didn't seem as dark as I'd like in the RACI, the stars around M33 were not that clear and so after 10 minutes of searching, I drew a blank. I tend to find M33, along with it's namesake M101 tricky, which must be down to my 20 SQM and the spread out brightness?

I headed over to M15. This old girl responded best to 98x of magnification, the 10" didn't quite give me enough light for the 7mm, which I did try at first. There was clear arms branching out with some resolved detail around the edges. 

I dropped down to M2 but the session was about to get cut shorter than I'd have liked. The cloud had started to sweep back in ,which led me quickly back to watch Ganymede exiting from the disc. The autumnal damp air is upon us but I felt happy with a very quick hour+ and back in bed at a normal time to boot. 

[Stu]

Nice report @Stardaze, sounds like a good session 👍. I was out last night too, mainly concentrating on Jupiter and Saturn as there was quite a lot of high haze around which kills the deep sky objects. My skies around around 20.5 and I’ve yet to spot M33, must keep trying on nights which are more transparent with no moon. Thanks for the report 👍

[Stardaze]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

Nice report @Stardaze, sounds like a good session 👍. I was out last night too, mainly concentrating on Jupiter and Saturn as there was quite a lot of high haze around which kills the deep sky objects. My skies around around 20.5 and I’ve yet to spot M33, must keep trying on nights which are more transparent with no moon. Thanks for the report 👍

Thanks Stu. There was high cloud around on dusk, but it seemed to have disappeared by 9. I’ve been concentrating on the two planets too more recently, there hasn’t been many opportunities of late for DSO observations.