What did you see tonight?

[PeterC65]

EAA is different to visual, but many of the things people like about visual still apply to it. You still have to tease out the shapes of nebulae, try to make something from the fuzz of most galaxies, trying different things on different nights to sometimes see anything at all. And when you do see something, it is all your own doing, with your limited equipment on the night, quite different from looking at images from NASA, or looking at AP images come to that.

I still enjoy visual even though I get to see far less. The challenge of seeing something is there for both, it's just much more of a challenge for visual.

 

[RobertI]

Brief session tonight with the 4” under high hazy cloud -  Jupiter was the only thing worth seeking out and was quite steady. Sketch made at the scope and tidied up a little indoors.

 

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by RobertI

[Coco]

Yesterday morning I bathed the 12” dob mirror in a nice soapy bath and wipe down with IPA swab, cleaned it after a year standing upright in the garage all summer, several dusty jobs like cutting bathroom tiles son welding projects etc, it was filthy. Even found some of our Ragdoll’s cat hairs on it \o/ 

Jupiter was superb but Saturn was spectacular the whole family looked, even Michele next door who has now put dark blinds up in her bathroom her security light off as she does if there are stars visible! The cat still does not like her dog. ☺️
They went in due to the cold. 

Uranus was colourless but round orb and reasonably large amoungst the stars.

Gorged myself then on as many double stars via Skysafari and the Cambridge Double star catalogue controlled by Nexus II mounted on the dob made it a short marathon. Plenty of colours, I kept a SVBony 6mm eyepiece in it most of the night, great optic but now convinced I need their little zoom..

Total time out 3 hours, I still feel blessed 😌

[Ags]

Last night I saw the first draft of my minor planet finder charts for my 2024 asteroid campaign. Never seen one, that's gonna change!

[josefk]

15 hours ago, PeterC65 said:

Three EAA sessions in the last week which makes a nice change!

The first two (Monday and Tuesday) were with the 72mm Apo then last night I used the Explorer 150. The new Optolong L-eNhance filter was very impressive with both scopes, but it does benefit from longer exposures, 15s rather than the 4s that I normally use. The StellaMira field flattener has also improved the corner and edge stars with the refractor.

EAA sessions tend to go on for longer than visual sessions, last night I was observing for five hours, and so I'm experiencing dew problems with the refractor and the little Askar FMA135 that always rides piggyback on the main scope these days. I have the appropriate dew heaters on the way from FLO and plan to build a bespoke power wiring harness.

Since I've swapped to the L-eNhance, I've been concentrating on emission nebulae. M27 and NGC6888 looked particularly good last night, but I could also see form in the nebulosity of NGC1491, NGC1579, NGC7023 and NGC7129. These last two were better with filters other than the L-eNhance. NGC7023 needed the UV/IR cut filter as it is a broadband reflection nebula and NGC7129 turned out to emit in the IR band and looked best with the IR Pass filter. I mostly use the IR Pass filer for reducing atmospheric wobble when observing the Moon and Planets, so it was nice to find another use for it.

Here is M27 with the L-eNhance and 4s exposures ...

and NGC6888 also with the L-eNhance but with 15s exposures ...

Both images are snapshots of the live stacks from last night.

 

This looks fantastic. I've said it before - while i have a technical job and use screens all day at work i don't see myself getting into EAA (i need an analogue hobby as an antidote to work) but in the far future i can definitely see EAA (or more preferably NV if the prices come down) as an alternative to wrestling with a large or very large scope to achieve these views. Not instead of visual but a bit like you do as something to do "as well as". Super.

Edited November 12, 2023 by josefk

[Bugdozer]

15 hours ago, John said:

Those views are so far advanced from the non-EAA views (even through large scopes) 😲

Makes you wonder why the rest of us non-EAA observers bother to turn out 🙄

Because there's something special about seeing things with your own eyes badly compared to looking at a picture of them even in greater detail. 

[Telescope40]

Hello all. Rather late to the show here but i actually had 2 sessions over the past 2 nights. Could be it now till Xmas but let's see 😜

Friday night turned out to be taster session as it seemed so long since I'd been outside. Used my time mainly on a new standard pair of plossls with my MaxB binoviewers.  Caught the shadow transit of Ganymede with Jupiter showing some nice belt info.  As I had work on Saturday I could not wait around for Orion to rise to have an extension to my session. 

Saturday - glorious day with not a cloud in the sky. Bout 6 pm a sheet of cloud appeared and I thought I was done for. Miraculously all clear by 6.45. Started on Saturn. Very sharp even tho not too well placed.  4 moons immediately spotted without averted vision. Spent a good half an hour playing with magnifications to get the best view. Conditions proving real good.  

Jupiter next - GRS getting around the limb. Very bright image. Somewhat washed out as noted by others. Getting nice colours from the GRS and bands. NEB looked very busy for sure. I have some filters but never got around to playing them as trying to make the most of the time.  Didn't really note of the magnifications I was using. Felt Saturn edged out Jupiter for the best of the night. 

Moved on to a few usual suspects - M27, Enif, M15, Almach, Albeireo, Al Fawaris. Forgot about Comet Lemmon  DOH.

Overall a rather good night and hit a few buttons after such a long break. 

 

John 

[Moonshed]

21 hours ago, wookie1965 said:

My next door neighbours won't be back until tomorrow afternoon now so the bathroom and back bedroom lights will be until they get in. 

When I see the problems you have with light pollution from your neighbours and what you have to do to try to overcome it, it makes me realise just how lucky I am. Your determination to overcome your problems, not just light pollution but poor health as well, is why I have to take my hat off to you.

Keith

Edited November 12, 2023 by Moonshed

[scotty1]

While looking for Comet H2 Lemmon ,I've seen two fast moving moderately bright meteors heading Southwest from cygnus towards Altair.

[Moonshed]

58 minutes ago, scotty1 said:

While looking for Comet H2 Lemmon ,I've seen two fast moving moderately bright meteors heading Southwest from cygnus towards Altair.

You patiently wait for hour after hour then along come two together. They must be some form of interstellar bus.

[scotty1]

2 hours ago, Moonshed said:

You patiently wait for hour after hour then along come two together. They must be some form of interstellar bus.

Yes I was outside for about 25mins and saw one. Then went again for 30 secs to check for clouds, and saw another. 

It's around the Peak of the Taurids now, but these were not from that radiant.  

 

Edited November 13, 2023 by scotty1

[John]

I've had a nice 45 minute session watching the Great Red Spot traverse Jupiter's meridian. Lovely details around the spot and within the N and S equatorial belts. The GRS hollow in the SEB seemed to have a dark "eyebrow" type feature framing the leading side of the spot in the direction it was traversing the jovian disk. Just to the south of the GRS was a truncated portion of the South Temperate Belt. The STB gave the appearance of being "towed" across the disk by the GRS. An illusion of course but nice anyway 🙂

Lots of cloud about so views were grabbed as they popped through gaps in the cloud layers.

The scope used was my Tak FC100 and 150x seemed to do the trick, magnification-wise.

[Mr Spock]

Wind and rain here 

[Saganite]

The seeing is fair and the transparency is not great  here tonight, never the less the GRS and the Europa transit are both showing well in the 6". High overhead Vega and the Double Double are excellent.  I cannot see Europa yet.

Edited November 14, 2023 by Saganite

[cloudsweeper]

Not been out for many, many weeks, so at 5.20pm when I spotted Jupiter (low, east) between houses I decided to shake off the inertia and took out the ED80 Triplet on AZ4, my lovely grab 'n' go set up.

Two equatorial bands were clear and sharp, and three moons were scattered around the disc.  

The Double Cluster was easy to find with x13 / 5.4deg by going down the line from Cassiopeia's Navi and Ruchbah.  I upped the mag a bit, lovely.  (This is also preparation for showing some young cousins some of the delights of the night sky.)

Before long, it clouded over, but it was good to get back in action with these easy yet endlessly enjoyable targets.

Doug.

 

Edited November 14, 2023 by cloudsweeper

[Saganite]

Hi Doug ,

 

Hope you are keeping well....🙂

 

[Stu]

Good to see you out Doug, it’s been pretty grim, hasn’t it?

Europa shadow transit and GRS just coming to an end if you are still out 👍

[cloudsweeper]

1 hour ago, Saganite said:

Hi Doug ,

 

Hope you are keeping well....🙂

 

Thanks Steve - not bad, just lacked motivation I suppose.   Hope you're enjoying the Dob by the way!  (It was good to meet you both.)

Doug.

[cloudsweeper]

1 hour ago, Stu said:

Good to see you out Doug, it’s been pretty grim, hasn’t it?

Europa shadow transit and GRS just coming to an end if you are still out 👍

Thanks Stu - nice to link up with SGL pals again.  I would've done more but for the clouds, so red wine trumped the red spot!

Doug.

[LaurenceT]

I spent the early part of the evening refocusing the guide scope which was a bit frustrating but did it in the end. I wasn't going to do anything else but my wife mentioned that the stars were excellent when she came back indoors from being walked around the garden by the dog.

So instead of going upstairs like a good boy I grabbed the Startravel 102 and got excellent views of Jupiter with belts showing beautifully (I must have left a blue filter on!).

The best view of all was of the Pleiades. I suddenly realized that I could see them with my naked eyes so putting the scope on them was easy. All I can say is that the sight was breathtaking!

[Nigella Bryant]

Just back in from a session on Jupiter. 40mile an hour gusts, wondered whether the dome would take off, lol. Nothing stops us if there's a bit of clear sky, lol. Anyhow, Jupiter was absolutely amazing, crisp blue elongated festoons draped the equatorial zone from both North and South equatorial belts. I could see a disturbance in the South equatorial belt and many festoones. There was two dark yellow areas also associated with the equatorial region. 

Uranus was decidedly greenish in colour and seemed darker at the bottom from the equatorial region down to the limb.

Just a pic of the screen from my mobile phone and the telescope in action tonight. 

[Peter_D]

There's a transit of Jupiter by Io taking place at the moment. I was trying to observe it visually (Orion OMC 140 Mak), couldn't make it out. I started to image it (was clearly visible) and going back to the visual, I could now see the transit using a 7mm part of a 21-7mm zoom.

[lunator]

Had a short session out tonight before the clouds rolled in. My step-son and his girlfriend were around so as the scope had been out all afternoon so was well acclimatised.

His girlfriend had never looked through a telescope before so I thought I would start with Saturn. I got a very satisfying 'Oh Wow' a well known response to a first view of Saturn. 😁

The next stop was Jupiter. Showing some lovely detail at x150 and I did get a glimpse of the Io transit. The verdict was it was a good as Saturn.

I thought something different would be good so swung the scope round to  M57. At x100 it showed a clear doughnut shape. They were both pleased to see their first grey smudge 🙂

I couldn't help myself and had to show them a double Gamma Aries. They were intrigued to think that they were a pair of stars in orbit. I also explained they were discovered by Robert Hooke whilst he as following a comet.

The final target was Neptune. Apparently it is a favourite planet. It took some finding in the conditions but we finally managed to track down a tiny blue-grey disc. 

The clouds had rolled in some called it a night.

Cheers

Ian

[Mr H in Yorkshire]

9 hours ago, lunator said:

Had a short session out tonight before the clouds rolled in. My step-son and his girlfriend were around so as the scope had been out all afternoon so was well acclimatised.

There is nothing quite so pleasing as showing novices these classic objects, though I would have added M31. Despite all the incredible imagery available there is nothing quite like seeing the planets, wobbling slightly in the turbulent air, just hanging in the blackness. 

[jjohnson3803]

Went out about 0430 today.  Unfortunately, winter constellations are behind trees and houses now at that time in the morning and I'm not a galaxy observer, so I spent some time studying the Beehive and then swung over to Mel 111.

I guess I either have to get up earlier or switch to late evening observing.