Night vision - Grand nebulae tour from London back garden

[GavStar]

It was a lovely clear night sky in London tonight and also no moon so I thought it was about time for a decent night vision astronomy session.

I went for my grab and go setup, ie az gti mount and Takahashi fsq85. First up was a bit of experimenting with my Televue 67mm and reducers and also my Televue 55mm in afocal mode with my pvs-14. Given the light pollution I only used my chroma 3nm ha filter. The reducers gave relatively disappointing star shapes tonight so I quickly just focussed on the eyepieces only. The 67mm is nice with good stars to the edge but it does suffer from some vignetting - not really noticeable for visual but quite obvious when I take some phone pics through it. The 55mm didn’t have the vignetting but the edge stars were pretty yucky (lines not points!).

I then dusted off my Televue panoptic 41mm to compare with my experiences with the 67mm and 55mm. Although a bit dimmer, the 41mm didn’t vignette and also had nice sharp round stars right to the edge. As a result it stayed in the focuser for the rest of the session. I started with Cygnus (North America, Veil and Butterfly) and then gradually made my way across the rest of the sky taking in the Pac-man, Heart, Soul, California, Monkeyhead, Rosette and then finally the Flame/Horsehead. Phone pics attached and bearing in mind this is from an sqm 18 (light polluted) London back garden, I really want to get this setup to a dark site soon. The fov of around 4 degrees frames many showpiece nebulae very nicely.

I think November is one of the best times to observe with night vision - there are loads of showpiece nebulae all over the sky - and nebulae are what night vision really excels at. I’d definitely recommend grabbing your nv kit and scope at the next clear night to do a “Grand nebulae tour”.

Edited November 3, 2021 by GavStar

[RobertI]

Lovely results Gav. Particularly interesting to see the relative sizes of the different nebulae.  As you say that is a good field of view for nebulae. 👍

[Stu]

You made the most of the clear night Gavin 👍. The forecast was wrong here so I wasn’t expecting it to be clear.

A very capable setup despite being so ‘grab and go’, although amazing to see the different image scale between this and your C11 and 16”.

[vineyard]

Gorgeous, it's impossible to pick a favourite from those 👏🏾 

Such a beautiful night, I took the 6nm Ha + PVS14 for a spin: saw stuff there is no way I could otherwise have seen👍🏾  Will try & share a quick report later in the day!

[GavStar]

18 minutes ago, Stu said:

You made the most of the clear night Gavin 👍. The forecast was wrong here so I wasn’t expecting it to be clear.

A very capable setup despite being so ‘grab and go’, although amazing to see the different image scale between this and your C11 and 16”.

Thanks Stu. As you know I was going purchase a Sharpstar 13028 as a larger aperture grab and go. But after last night I think I’m going to stick with the easy setup, pinpoint stars and lovely flat field of the fsq85 (night vision is notorious for exaggerating any fc exhibited by the scope).

And you’re right, the fsq85 and c11/16 inch dob work in great partnership for big and small objects respectively…

[AL1]

Lovely images,  I can feel a tug on my credit card looking at these.

[Mike JW]

Enjoyed the shots, inspirational. Sharp stars are a winner.

Mike