What did you see tonight?

[Astro_Dad]

Lots of moon observation in the community tonight - similar to @IB20 out again as the moon looking inviting - clearish night. Interesting to see how the view has changed over 24h, comparing eyepiece views and iPhone captures. Copernicus prominent tonight for example. Hopefully a chance to spot S@N’s June moonwatch target Hortensius tomorrow night if the clear skies continue… This capture using the 10” Dob and a 12mm BST Starguider, helped by the Celestron NexYZ phone adapter. 
 

[PeterStudz]

Have just come in after looking at the moon. Clouds came in but it was about time to got to bed.

Copernicus did look stunning - it’s got to be one of my top favourite lunar crater. Could also make out Thors hammer.

[Kon]

I was up at 3am to try some imaging and visual of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. It did not disappoint seeing all three in one go. Seeing was awful but still nice to be out after a long time.

 

[Astro_Dad]

9th June, c 10.30pm BST. Attempting the Moonwatch target challenge featured in the June Sky at Night magazine - the crater Hortensius. First opportunity reported to be tonight - luckily and unexpectedly clear but battling the clouds! 

10” Dob the instrument of choice and having started at 25mm (48x power) then got in close with an 8mm BST Starguider (150x power). Clouds rolling in thick and fast but managed a few iPhone images which I then flipped and followed the guide in S&N magazine (and Sky Atlas) to help identify some of the key lunar features.

Starting with the prominent Copernicus (C) and moving SW to Hortensius (H), with Hortensius B (HB) and Hortensius A (HA) forming an approximate straight line. Craters Reinhold (R) and Reinhold B (RB) off to the SE. Lansberg (L) also labelled.

It’s certainly been interesting studying the moon over the past three nights, and if correctly identified my first Moonwatch target located! 

Edited June 9, 2022 by Astro_Dad

[Astro_Dad]

After three consecutive nights of lunar viewing it was tempting to take advantage of a clear Friday night and further test the StarSense tech on the 10” - I started on the moon at 11pm.  Bright waxing gibbous  dominating the sky and providing a target for me to align my new Celestron Starpointer Pro (didn’t get chance to do this in daylight earlier). Nice to view through the 25mm Xcel but despite the lack of true darkness and bright moon set about some other targets. 

M3 globular - a lovely target easily found equidistant between Cor caroli and Arcturus - the StarSense had no difficulty finding this and it presented itself fairly centrally in the eyepiece. I switched to an 8mm ocular to go deeper - brilliant view with averted vision. 

M13 next - stunning as ever. I wanted to seek out nearby faint galaxy NGC6207. No luck - the StarSense app located it for me but I couldn’t see it through the eyepiece. Maybe next time. 

M92 next up - again an easy find using the StarSense  app. I say easy but StarSense is slightly harder I’ve found with targets very high up towards the zenith ,  taking it slowly however and with some patience it is Spot on … another fine globular with incredible detail resolved with the 10 inch.
 

Albireo - beautiful as ever!

Getting close to 3 in the morning so called it a day after a quick look at the Double Cluster and the Coathanger open cluster in Vulpecula. Despite no true astronomical darkness, a very enjoyable observing session! 

 

Edited June 11, 2022 by Astro_Dad
Spelling

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

For the last couple of months life and rare cloud free skies have clashed, so the kit hasn't seen the light. However, last night despite the 20mph gusts the Skymax 127 felt the breeze for an hour or so lunar observing. I even took out a lunar atlas!

Focusing on Mare Humorum, seeing was wobbly so high powers were out, but sticking to a maximum of 166x with an Altair FF 9mm, the Gassendi rilles were easily discernable. A pleasant hour despite the wind.

 

Edited June 11, 2022 by ScouseSpaceCadet

[cloudsweeper]

1 hour ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

For the last couple of months life and rare cloud free skies have clashed, so the kit hasn't seen the light. However, last night despite the 20mph gusts the Skymax 127 felt the breeze for an hour or so lunar observing. I even took out a lunar atlas!

Focusing on Mare Humorum, seeing was wobbly so high powers were out, but sticking to a maximum of 166x with an Altair FF 9mm, the Gassendi rilles were easily discernable. A pleasant hour despite the wind.

 

I did the same last night Peter - Gassendi and Schiller.  And yes, the seeing was poor with a wobbly view at about x140.  

I used the time to compare the view with the 8" Cat + Focal Reducer, using a 1.25" and a 2" diagonal.  Seemed to me that either can be used and give perfectly acceptable views.  A worthwhile exercise!

Doug.

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

22 minutes ago, cloudsweeper said:

I did the same last night Peter - Gassendi and Schiller.  And yes, the seeing was poor with a wobbly view at about x140.  

I used the time to compare the view with the 8" Cat + Focal Reducer, using a 1.25" and a 2" diagonal.  Seemed to me that either can be used and give perfectly acceptable views.  A worthwhile exercise!

Doug.

Nice Doug. I had a look around Schiller but decided to really survey and familiarise myself with Mare Humorum. All proper like! 😆🧐

Why the focal reducer? 

[cloudsweeper]

34 minutes ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

Nice Doug. I had a look around Schiller but decided to really survey and familiarise myself with Mare Humorum. All proper like! 😆🧐

Why the focal reducer? 

Two things mainly Peter - it sharpens up the star images, and (with 2" diag.) raises the best FOV from 1.34deg to 2.13deg.  

The drawback with these huge FL Cats is the lack of FOV.  So the FR overcomes that, whilst maintaining the aperture and still giving lots of mag.

Doug.

[Ags]

Had some guests, the first since Covid. We did some Ha solar observing. I showed one guest how to focus, and they tried for a bit, then turned to me. "However I focus it, it stays red?" The kids were all like, whatever. But at least some walked away impressed.

[Ags]

Did some Lunar observing with my C6 in the evening, now it is 2am and I am shooting some short sequences of NaN, Sadr, Albireo and the Ring.

Edited June 12, 2022 by Ags

[RobertI]

Was out viewing Luna last night with the 102ED plus binoviewers at both 170x and 75x. The area around Aristarchus and Schroter’s Valley was very interesting to explore. Also looked at some carbon stars in Lyra and Cygnus. It was fun and quite challenging tracking them down in the moonlit sky, in binoviewer mode at 75x. They stand out like dark glowing embers. T Lyrae was the reddest of the lot, genuinely looking blood red, rather than dark orange colour. I looked up the colour indexes and most of them were around +3.0, whereas T Lyrae was +5.5!! As a comparison Betelgeuse (orange) is +1.74 and Vega (white) is 0.0. I really like the binoviewers for lower powered views and looking forward to sweeping the Milky Way when the skies get darker again.

11 hours ago, Ags said:

Had some guests, the first since Covid. We did some Ha solar observing. I showed one guest how to focus, and they tried for a bit, then turned to me. "However I focus it, it stays red?" The kids were all like, whatever. But at least some walked away impressed.

Oh dear, frustrating, but funny! I got out my White Light setup to show the neighbours during the recent Jubilee Street party. There was a lovely sunspot visible through the binoviewers, but the most common reaction was “What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?”. I rapidly put the scope away again and went back to my champagne and scones! The moon is always a winner though, always get plenty of “oooh”s and “aaah”s with that. 

[Mr Spock]

Nothing for me. The scope has been stuck in the house for the last week. After a recent hospital admission I'm not allowed to do anything strenuous for a few weeks so it's staying there.

Just frustrating not to get out 

[Nik271]

I had a look at the Moon and a few doubles with my trusty Skymax 127. Finally managed to spot Rima Sharp - the seeing was very good. Izar at x200 was a picture perfect double with superimposed diffraction rings. Tried Nu  Scopii for the first time - a challenging 'double double'. At x200 I could just about split the dim pair (CD mag 6.6, 7.2, sep 2.4'') but the pair AB (4.3,5.3 sep. 1.3'') looked only an elongated fuzzy blob. At the time of observation the star was only at 16 degrees evelation so I'm pretty happy. It never rises very high in the UK, otherwise could be a grear showcase double.

[Astro_Dad]

32 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

Nothing for me. The scope has been stuck in the house for the last week. After a recent hospital admission I'm not allowed to do anything strenuous for a few weeks so it's staying there.

Just frustrating not to get out 

Get well soon @Mr Spock. 

[badhex]

I'm currently in Bortle 4 skies as opposed to my usual LP-ridden city skies with my ZS73, and have so far managed a few hours over the last two nights, albeit with a few clouds here and there and the very bright moon. North and West are obscured by trees etc. but I can move about the property and use either the front or rear of the property to see most of the rest of the sky. 

I spent a bit of time testing out my new Astronomik CLS although street lights are not too much of an issue here - mostly the moon! I also tried out my 0.965" 18mm Celestron/Vixen which is very sharp on axis with a little false colour off axis, and obviously the narrow FOV. 

Targets have been a few old favourites as well as a few new:

M57 providing a good baseline for different skies and filters etc.

M56 which I can't seem to get at my usual location

M13 - lovely as usual

In and around Delphinus which is basically not possible to pick out with the naked eye at home, but here is clearly a breaching dolphin. In the 40mm Lacerta I can fit pretty much the whole head in the FOV! 

Also, a couple of open clusters in Cepheus (a constellation I know nothing about) 

NGC 7160 - 7-10 stars picked out
NGC 7142 or possibly NGC 7129 - just a small group of pinprick stars, which I must go back and double check as I think my notes are wrong! 

 

 

Edited June 12, 2022 by badhex

[PeterC65]

8 minutes ago, badhex said:

I spent a bit of time testing out my new Astronomik CLS although street lights are not too much of an issue here - mostly the moon! I also tried out my 0.965" 18mm Celestron/Vixen which is very sharp on axis with a little false colour off axis, and obviously the narrow FOV.

What did you think of the Astronimik CLS? Have you used other light pollution filters, and if so, how did the CLS compare?

[Astro_Dad]

Nothing extraordinary to report tonight but still worth a very quick view of a 94% waxing gibbous moon on a clear night to round off the weekend. Interestingly testing the Rigel Quickfinder magnetically attached to the OTA base of the Heritage 150p - works surprisingly well so long as the table is sufficiently high to make finding comfortable through the RQ. Cor Caroli just about visible despite the moon brightness and with a clear Arcturus as usual couldn’t resist a quick look at favourite M3. Unexpectedly not a lot of discernible structure in the globular tonight though given lunar brightness and in the absence of fully dark adapted eyes (plus low power eyepiece, 25mm) but with clear skies at a premium just good to see anything!

Edited June 12, 2022 by Astro_Dad

[badhex]

15 hours ago, PeterC65 said:

What did you think of the Astronimik CLS? Have you used other light pollution filters, and if so, how did the CLS compare?

I have only used this one CLS filter so can't compare with others I'm afraid. It's early days yet, it did seem to bring out a bit more detail on the Ring but currently moon light is the biggest source of LP 😅 The true test will be in my normal observing location, though to be honest I'm not expecting miracles. Just want to experiment a bit and see if I can squeeze out a bit more performance from my setup. One thing to note, it does add a green tinge to everything which is not to everyone's taste! 

Edited June 13, 2022 by badhex

[Kon]

The rising moon looks amazing with its yellow hue against the blue sky at the moment.

[Nik271]

Saturn, Jupiter and Mars this morning at 4am.  The seeing was excellent and I could see a lot ot detail on Jupiter and Saturn, mutiple belts on Jupiter and the Cassini division on Saturn. Three of the Galilean moons were bunched together in a triangle.

Mars was very small and a bit lower down. The south polar cap was apparent and I thouth I could spot some dark markings in the south hemisphere but I'm not entirely sure about that. 

[Zermelo]

Another evenng shooting for doubles with the Mak, 13 of them.

The seeing was excellent tonight, probably Pickering 9, which allowed me to beat my previous record with SAO101273 and SAO17073, both 0.9", at x450.

I really didn't think I could tease any more out of the Mak, and these two were barely done. I think that really is it now.

Edited June 15, 2022 by Zermelo
Corrected figures, recorded wrongly after session

[PeterStudz]

I’ve just come in after a session on Saturn, Jupiter & Mars. In fact it’s the first time I’ve seen mars other than a tiny dot. Got up at 3am and set the 200p Dob outside to cool down for 30 mins.

Seeing quite good. I could make out the Cassini division on Saturn, some banding and several moons. Jupiter showed multiple banding. I had to wait until Mars passed a big tree at the end of a neighbour’s garden (I’m sure that thing has grown since last year). By this time it wasn’t far off sunrise. The whole thing was small/tiny, however, the southern ice cap was obvious, like it was wearing a small white hat - it seemed to glow. I also thought that I could make out some dark markings in the southern region - have just noticed that @Nik271 reported similar yesterday, we can’t both be mistaken!

I went back to have a look at Jupiter again. By this time it was 5:05am and after sunrise and I could only just make it out by eye. Interestingly the contrast, although a bit washed out, with some sunlight was better and I could make out features in the banding. To my pleasant surprise the GRS was also visible and seemed a bit more prominent than last year, but that could just be the light.

Then went back to Mars for one last look. By now I could not even see it by eye and had to use the PushTo feature in PS Align Pro on my iPhone in order to locate it. I could not even see it in my RACI but could see it in a low power eyepiece. Increasing the magnification revealed the ice cap again and it’s waxing gibbous kind of phase.

Packing up I was over the moon, or is it over Mars  

Edited June 15, 2022 by PeterStudz

[Whistlin Bob]

First observing session for a month last night- just me and 8 inch dob in the garden- it doesn't get simpler then that.

An early start in the morning meant I had a strict self imposed curfew, but in the twilight I had a nice time splitting Epsilon Lyra and Izar (good seeing!) and Arcturus looked magnificent- gold against deep blue. Albireo popped into view, with all its colour. Back up to Lyra for the Ring m57 and it was just visible. so I tried for M56 and it was there faintly with av. It was just dark enough now to see the stars of Hercules keystone, so I duly went up to m13 and enjoyed the view. Next for a bit of an experiment- I have a SW Aero 30mm which I've always enjoyed, but it's a bit soft around the edges, so I tried combining it with the SW 0.9 coma corrector that I use for imaging. Wow! Really crisp right across the field of view at a very comfortable 36x. Clearly the conditions were exceptional, but the eyepiece/corrector combo really performed too. I got lost sweeping up and down the milky way. My favourite bit was enjoying the star fields around Sadr. The inchworm cluster was tiny, but with pinpoint colourful stars. Pretty good stuff for a Newt!

Sitting in the garden in my shirtsleeves, searching out old familiars- summer observing is a very different experience...

[Zermelo]

Well the forecasts were spectacularly wrong here tonight.

CO, Meteoblue, Metcheck and the BBC were all saying clear until at least 1 a.m.

I've just brought the kit back inside, as it's thick cloud across the whole sky.