ED80 Deep-sky observing

[NGC 1502]

On Monday evening 1st November a few local club members and myself were at one of our club’s dark sites. It’s not a true dark site but it’s very definitely better than in town, and has excellent horizons.

I decided to take my ED80 refractor that had been returned to me recently, a friend had been using it. He’d upgraded to an 80mm triplet for imaging, therefore he returned my SW ED80 doublet.

On arrival at our venue the sky was wonderfully transparent, the MW easily seen. With Cygnus overhead I fitted my Ultrablock filter to my 27mm eyepiece to give 22x and a 3 degree field.

First up was the eastern Veil, no problem at all to see. A pleasant surprise was also seeing the dimmer western Veil just crammed into the 3 degree field.  An even nicer surprise was NGC7000, the “Gulf of Mexico” part readily identified, but mirror reversed with the necessary diagonal. M27 was almost shockingly bright in comparison, so I tried for the “Little Dumbbell” M76. It is of course a very short star hop from Phi Persei.  I could not spot M76. I panned around…..and then the penny dropped….being more used to Newtonians I’d temporarily forgotten the east-west reversed view I was using.  My target slid into view when I panned my alt-az mount correctly. The elongated dim hazy spot was better seen at 50x.

With filter removed I tried for some old favourite often observed galaxies. M31 had an obvious bright core contained in an approximate 2 degree elongated haze, M32 & 110 all together in the 3 degree field. Of course M81/82 but they’ll be much better placed in the spring.  Another pleasant surprise was the easy visibility of M33. Now this is hardly ground breaking observing but somehow much more satisfying when using a very modest aperture.  I just love the simplicity of the kit I was using.

Lots else followed but by mid evening the sky deteriorated and dewing up became an issue so we headed off home after a pleasant time.

Ed (not Ting😁)

 

 

 

[Stu]

Nice session Ed (not Ting!) 🤣

Some great targets there which never get boring to view, and simple kit often makes for very relaxed observing. Your skies sound pretty dark to me! 👍

[Alan White]

I was with Ed (not Ting) at the site with our club, the sky at the start was indeed super and very transparent with good seeing,
it of course did not last, but while it did, we all took advantage.

It was indeed a great evening and comparing views between the ED80 and my 10" Dobson at times was interesting.
I looked at the Veil while Ed was on it and it was visible in his eD80, quite something for even this site.

I have to say, I did similar to Ed and looked at lots of obvious targets, got quite excited to find a 'new' open cluster....
had dreams for a fleeting moment of it being White01, but not to be.
The walking astro enclopeadia, also called Ed (not Ting) had to say, that's Stock 23 and indeed it was, oh well,
White 01 will be in my own list from now on 😉

Reading Ed's posting, made me grin and brought back a pleasanr shared evenings observing at our darker site.