What did you see tonight?

[Epick Crom]

I had a fantastic view of Saturn last night! The seeing was rock steady and the sky very transparent. Saturn at 343x looked better than a photo, razor sharp and not even a slight flutter. It was so good that I spent the entire session only observing it! 

[Guest]

I am still toying around some with the new to me Orion XX16G and on a whim i rolled it out this evening. Didnt really have any one item on the agenda other then the Orion Nebula.  Thats the one item i could spend all night looking at.  Then the wife came out and said she wanted to see Mars.  That is relatively easy with the 16 and a ES 14mm 1.25" eyepiece and a filter brought the red planet to life.  I could see some surface detail, and i will have to consult a Mars map to see know just what i was looking at.  The wife said the Crab Nebula was just below it, so I swapped to the ES 31MM and a broadband filter and dropped down to it.  Ok... I don't know what everyone else thinks but that one is pretty underwhelming.  Personally that one will go on the " dont bother with again" list.  We spent the last half hour or so just picking random stuff and looking at it.  All in all not a bad night at all, especially when it was supposed to be fairly cloudy. 

Edited November 26, 2022 by Mike Q

[bosun21]

You need more magnification on Mars to get the best from it. 

[Guest]

8 hours ago, bosun21 said:

You need more magnification on Mars to get the best from it. 

Yeah it was ok, for my first real attempt at looking at it.  I have two filters that work decently on it.  If i had brought out my other case of 1.25 inch eyepieces i could have gotten it in better, but 200x wasnt bad at all in the 16.  Next time i will make sure to have that case with me and slap in a 5mm or use my 2 or 3x Barlow.   Of course Ohio skies keep me limited to around 300x most of the time. So i was really at about 2/3s of what i can usually expect to be able to use. 

Addendum:

There is a correction to be made.  I must have hit a number wrong in my math last night.  Its 128x not 200.  Thanks @Bosun21 for confirming that i should not be trusted with touch screens. 

Edited November 26, 2022 by Mike Q

[bosun21]

2 minutes ago, Mike Q said:

Yeah it was ok, for my first real attempt at looking at it.  I have two filters that work decently on it.  If i had brought out my other case of 1.25 inch eyepieces i could have gotten it in better, but 200x wasnt bad at all in the 16.  Next time i will make sure to have that case with me and slap in a 5mm or use my 2 or 3x Barlow.   Of course Ohio skies keep me limited to around 300x most of the time. So i was really at about 2/3s of what i can usually expect to be able to use. 

A 14mm eyepiece in a 1800mm focal length telescope is only 128x

[Astro_Dad]

On 23/11/2022 at 23:52, Ratlet said:

I managed to find M33 easily enough from Mothallah.  A distinct bright patch although still very faint lying smack dab in the middle of an equatorial trangle of stars.

Nice report @Ratlet and well done finding M33 - I struggled on that one this week but very motivated to have another go 👍🏻

Really enjoying your sketches - impressive, and they add so much to the observing report. 

[Guest]

7 hours ago, bosun21 said:

A 14mm eyepiece in a 1800mm focal length telescope is only 128x

Yes it is, i must have not pressed the right number of the calculator last night. 

[johnturley]

The sky unexpectedly cleared at about 23.00 last night, so thought I would have a quick look at Mars, conditions weren't too bad, but with some unsteadiness. A heavy dew however came down after opening my observatory shed, so I was limited to less than an hour of observing time.

Image taken through my Esprit 150, with my ZWO ASI 462 planetary camera, 2.5 x Powermate, 3-minute exposure, 28,000 frames giving 157 fps, processed in AutoStakkert, Registax and Lightroom. 

John  

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by johnturley

[paulastro]

Nov 27th, Mars and thwarted attempts to  pbserve Flamimg Star Neb surrounding variable AE Auriga, and Rosette Neb. Out from 11.40 - 12.40am.

Always around 70% cloud which prevented  any useful deep sky, but good minutes on Mars,  now m - 1.8, 17.2",  A rough sketch done at the telescope shown below, labels added after the event using Mars Mapper 2022. Cloud filled in at 12.40 am. beautiful colours on Mars as usual.

I was using the 8 inch StarSense Dob and I've also added a  screen grab to show the detail shown when I was attempting to see the Flaming Star Neb.  Alas the cloud came in a couple of seconds after I had pushed the scope to the target but before I could look through the eyepiece! The message at the top is because I touched the phone in order to take the screen grab.

Edited November 28, 2022 by paulastro
Typos

[Stu1smartcookie]

On 26/11/2022 at 04:13, Mike Q said:

The wife said the Crab Nebula was just below it, so I swapped to the ES 31MM and a broadband filter and dropped down to it.  Ok... I don't know what everyone else thinks but that one is pretty underwhelming.  Personally that one will go on the " dont bother with again" list. 

Don't be too hard on the crab ... i understand its not the brightest or most glam ... but think what you are looking at ... seeing something at all is amazing

 

[cloudsweeper]

Spur of the moment, one-hour session with the 8SE (with focal reducer, as usual these days) before mealtime:

Waxing crescent Moon, low, near south - nice to see the Earthshine naked eye, then in the EP x36 / 2.03deg of field.

Saturn - a bit higher, to the east; Jupiter higher still, SE.

Having aligned on the Moon, I wasn't sure the GoTo would hit M31.  It did, perfectly!  Large bright fuzz at x53.  Better framed at x36, with many surrounding stars.  Never fails to fascinate.

Even further round, the Double Cluster, and GoTo was spot on with that too.  Beautiful as ever x36 / 2.03deg.

Always good to go for easier, familiar targets!

And so, mealtime (with a slug of red).

Doug.

 

[Stu]

Clear skies here, Jupiter and Mars shining brightly. Popped the Tak out on the Zero mount and had a quick look at both. As always, took a little while for more detail to become visible on Jupiter, GRS looking a nice orange colour. The NEB was very distinct, but SEB not really; the whole of the southern hemisphere just appeared a kind of greyish colour to me, with the GRS part surrounded by a band of white.

Mars looked quite sharp, could have done with some more mag. Just a band of dark markings across the southern part, I think Syrtis Major is off to the edge of the disk but I couldn’t see it.

Sky looks pretty nice out, but heading bedwards now.

[Nik271]

I managed a good look at Mars at about 10pm in between  banks of fog. Very good seeing, I pushed the 127 Skymax to x200 and Mars was looking tack sharp. Terra Cimmeria was visible as a dark band in the south The limitation was the AZ5 on its adapted tripod. Good for grab and go but at these magnifications gets too shaky. I think closest approach of Mars is this week. The forecast looks grim, let's hope it's wrong!

Edited November 28, 2022 by Nik271

[Stu]

I just wandered to the bottom of the garden when I put the dog out, and the sky looks wonderful. Orion rising in the South seats, looking quite high up. Milky Way visible as a faint band, and the Double Cluster easily visible naked eye. Nice.

[RobertI]

Went out for a look just now, clear but very misty. Put the binoculars up to my eyes, which seemed to induce a violent coughing fit, my eyes ended up watering so much that I couldn’t see and I was making so much noise, that I had to retreat indoors for the sake of the neighbours. Not the most successful session! 

[Captain Scarlet]

Supposed to be clear tonight so I set up my 150mm Intes Mak. The 12” would have been out but it’s disassembled in advance of fitting a new OO mirror-cell. However, the forecasts LIED, in fact low cloud, so all I managed was a collimation test on distant radar-dome lights and some images of Poisson Spots:

 

[Zermelo]

Just crept in after a five hour session with the Mak, a bit mixed. The seeing was iffy early on, and then cloud started to appear at low and mid levels. At one point I had to grab an umbrella to shield the kit from a shower, well most of it.

For another hour I was dodging clouds, trying to re-align the scope to correct some aberrant behaviour. As soon as I could see one of the alignment stars, the other would duck behind some cloud. I finally got a clear patch, set it going, checked the finder - no star. Very odd, I've matched the star pattern 100%, but there's a gap where the alignment star should be. What was it again ... Mira Ceti, oh for ******* 🤦‍♂️ (Dear Skywatcher, perhaps this isn't such a great one to include in your list ...)

Finally the cloud cleared, and I got some reasonable views of Jupiter and Mars. The seeing wasn't the best, so the tighter doubles weren't splitting, but I did see some new, wider ones in Cassiopeia. I finally got to compare my new Altair 2x Telextender against a Celestron barlow. The Altair just about won the evening, especially combined with the BCO 10mm.

I revisited the planets a few times as the conditions improved. I saw some darker regions on Mars, but Jupiter's southern belts were surprisingly vague, as @Stu said above. Getting a bit cold and damp now, but the Eastern horizon was looking too tempting to leave, as Orion and Gemini made an appearance over the fence. M35 was very pleasant in the 24mm UFF.

In the end, worth sticking it out.

[Ratlet]

Clear skies in Brechin for once.  Got the imaging rig out and got some data with the Tair 3.  M81/M82, M45 and a bit on the horsehead.  No point setting that up and not observing.

Mostly focused on finding Caldwell 22.  Pretty sure I found it starhopping with stellarium.  Mostly viewed with the 32mm plossl.  Did a weird blinking thing where if I looked directly at it it would sometimes disappear/dim, but looked quite bright with averted vision.  Tried my UHC filter but I don't think it really provided anything useful.  The 8mm was fogging up.

Tried finding the veil but I think it is possibly to low down ATM for good observing.

M42 poked it's head out above the neighbours house.  Viewing wasn't the best though and could only resolve 3 of the Trapezium stars.

Mars looked good with the 8mm.  The best does this weird thing if it figs where you get this weird tunnel effect going with a vastly lighter central region. Despite this I could clearly see darker areas in the west extending north/south.

Rather nippy out.  Most of my hear was frosted up by the time I came in

 

 

[Captain Scarlet]

… after my lamenting that the skies hadn’t lived up to forecast, I finally went out last thing to pack it all up and lo-n-behold it was clear! I decided to stay out while it lasted and managed Jupiter with a definite dark patch in the middle of one of the bands, but seemingly not the GRS; Mars with some dark features, Uranus clearly a bluish disc, M42’s Trapezium with just a momentary glimpse of the E and finally as the dew was intruding Sigma Orionis but no C this time. All at 151x with my Intes M603 and Tak LE 12.5 .

Nice session, Magnus

 

[PeterC65]

My last couple of sessions had been exactly as @Zermelo described, rolling clouds preventing me from seeing two alignment stars at the same time and then, for good measure, some rain. I gave up both times.

But last night two weather forecasts were predicting clear skies, so I tentatively ventured out at 8pm and it remained clear until after midnight, by which time the kit was soaked in dew.

It turned out to be one of my best EEVA sessions (with the 72mm APO and Uranus-C camera). I started with M33 which is now a firm favourite for EEVA as it nicely fills the FoV and I can see plenty of detail. Having recently worked out how to search for specific objects in Stellarium I tried for some more galaxies, NGC1023, M77, M74, NGC1055, all quite small but I could see some detail. I need to use the x2.25 Barlow next time.

Then I noticed that M42 was well above the horizon, one of my favourite targets that I'd not seen since last Winter. I've been looking forward to seeing it with the camera and, well, wow, I mean WOW. I could see detail in a single 4s frame and when I started live stacking, well, WOW! The detail was just amazing and to think the scope was looking at it there and then.

As often happens, M42 got me fired up about nebulae so I tried for IC434, the Horsehead Nebulae. I'd previously tried to see this visually but saw nothing, not even the brighter Flame Nebula nearby. With the camera the Flame Nebula was obvious and then, very slowly, after several minutes, I could just make out the shape of a horses head. Very pleased to finally see this as I've known about it since I was a boy.

Finished off with some star clusters, NGC2264, M35, Cr69 (now that I can find these with Stellarium) and then finally another favourite, M81 & M82. First time for this double galaxy with EEVA, some detail but by now the dew was getting the upper hand.

I really must concentrate on the planets next time ...

 

[Astro_Dad]

29/11

A very cold crisp November night last night with brilliant clear skies. I wasn’t planning on any observing but decided to take advantage after enjoying some lovely naked eye views. 

Took out The Heritage 150p and opted for a manual non GOTO approach taking in a few well known easy to locate targets. The Pleiades and The Orion Nebula impressed as always. The Double Cluster stood out clearly unaided and looked spectacular at low power - although I only had my zoom with me so had a slightly hampered field of view at the longest FL. Took in a nice unstructured tour of the various sites around Cassiopeia- enjoyed seeing the ET (Owl) cluster again, and M103 looking good. 

Finished the session past 12am with a long look at Mars, seeing didn’t seem ideal overall and image not as sharp as with the 8” last week, but nevertheless a good view with albedo features visible at 150x power. 

[Zermelo]

21 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:

My last couple of sessions had been exactly as @Zermelo described, rolling clouds preventing me from seeing two alignment stars at the same time and then, for good measure, some rain. I gave up both times.

But last night two weather forecasts were predicting clear skies, so I tentatively ventured out at 8pm and it remained clear until after midnight, by which time the kit was soaked in dew.

It turned out to be one of my best EEVA sessions (with the 72mm APO and Uranus-C camera). I started with M33 which is now a firm favourite for EEVA as it nicely fills the FoV and I can see plenty of detail. Having recently worked out how to search for specific objects in Stellarium I tried for some more galaxies, NGC1023, M77, M74, NGC1055, all quite small but I could see some detail. I need to use the x2.25 Barlow next time.

Then I noticed that M42 was well above the horizon, one of my favourite targets that I'd not seen since last Winter. I've been looking forward to seeing it with the camera and, well, wow, I mean WOW. I could see detail in a single 4s frame and when I started live stacking, well, WOW! The detail was just amazing and to think the scope was looking at it there and then.

As often happens, M42 got me fired up about nebulae so I tried for IC434, the Horsehead Nebulae. I'd previously tried to see this visually but saw nothing, not even the brighter Flame Nebula nearby. With the camera the Flame Nebula was obvious and then, very slowly, after several minutes, I could just make out the shape of a horses head. Very pleased to finally see this as I've known about it since I was a boy.

Finished off with some star clusters, NGC2264, M35, Cr69 (now that I can find these with Stellarium) and then finally another favourite, M81 & M82. First time for this double galaxy with EEVA, some detail but by now the dew was getting the upper hand.

I really must concentrate on the planets next time ...

 

Congratulations on the Horsehead, I guess EEVA is the best chance that most of us are going to get to see it.
And you didn't need a H-beta!

 

[PeterStudz]

Had an interesting session last night/this morning from my garden in Southampton. 

Only planned to have a look at Mars, especially so that my daughter could see it again before she went to bed. 

200p Dob & EQ platform out at about 9:20pm. Dew shields attached as it was definitely damp and dewy. Transparency looked good. Started on Mars around 10pm but the seeing was truly awful. The worse I’ve ever had. Mars just a fuzzy disc with no detail. Checked out Jupiter and that was fuzzy too. Could just make out some banding but it was all extremely washed out. 

Then went to check out the star clusters around Auriga - M36, M37 & M38 - a favourite of mine. These did look good and I haven’t seen them in ages.

A little look at the Orion Nebula. Always great. I could easily make out 4 stars in the Trapezium but they were oscillating/moving - not a good sign. 

Then back to Mars. Still a fuzzy blob. Then, all of a sudden, within a few minutes, the view dramatically improved. I could make out the North Polar Hood. Some dark features running east to west and also patches of white to the east and west of the South Pole, especially to the east. Maybe clouds? But they were obvious. Another observation - the North Polar Hood appears to be shrinking. On a few occasions I could get the magnification over 300x before things got fuzzy once more. 

I went back in for a coffee. Unfortunately, bring a school night, my daughter had long since gone to bed. Out again around mid-night. There was a lot of dew with gear soaking wet. Fortunately the dew shields did their job. Another look at Mars. Still quite good but maybe not quite as good. After a short while I could make out Syrtis Major swinging into view from the east. I attempted a sketch. One thing I’ve learnt is that with the likes of Mars you’ve got to look long and hard. Let eyes and brain build up a picture, almost like stacking when imaging. And It was mesmerised watching the planet slowly rotating and Syrtis Major coming more into view. The “clouds” near the South Pole still visible. 

Mars was getting closer to zenith and my Dob harder to nudge. But once in the centre of the FOV the EQ platform does the work. At about 00:50 I noticed the view in the eyepiece starting to get dark. Looking up fog was rapidly rolling in! And within a few moments had completely covered the sky. Fascinating watching it form but ended the night. Probably just as well as I was thinking about other targets and had work in the morning. All in all not bad and looking at the forecast I’m glad I made the efforts 

Edited November 29, 2022 by PeterStudz

[Nakedgun]

~

Based on weather forecasts, I thought Tuesday night's observing would be my last for the next week, but by Wednesday afternoon it became apparent that this was not to be the case. Clouds were coming, no question, but I might get some eyepiece-time, beforehand.

The GM-8/Berlebach was still outside so I mounted my Agema SD 120 near sundown and hoped for the best.

Went outside 1830hrs to still-clear skies and immediately zeroed in on Saturn. The seeing was a solid good, with all-to-brief seconds of excellent. This allowed scaling up the magnification to 298x, and I simply adjusted my chair to allow me to park my eyeball at the eyepiece without effort, where I remained for some time, transfixed. This proved to be the best view during the current apparition. Titan and Rhea were the only moons seen.

Noting the increasing clouds approaching, I moved on to Jupiter and watched as Io was occulted by the gas ball at 2000. No GRS available, alas.

On to the 1st-quarter Moon, where I was able to ramp up to 418 horsepower at the eyepiece and love every minute.

By 2030 the clouds began to enshroud our satellite, so I quit the field, satisfied.

 

Stopped for a moment at 1930 to capture the rig with this 30-second exposure. A plane makes its way across the sky, entering from the upper left.

 

 

.

[F15Rules]

On 23/11/2022 at 09:59, Astro_Dad said:

Mars was a revelation - so often it can be overly bright and so hard to discern detail but this was a milestrone for me - beating anything I saw at the 2020 opposition

I agree that Mars is very bright at the moment..have you tried using planetary filters to reduce glare and increase contrast?

I've recently acquired a few filters (for just £25 in excellent used condition), and in the few times I've used them so far, I've found both an orange red and blue filter to really make a difference to the features' visibility and clarity.

Dave