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What did you see tonight?


Ags

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Just in from an extended session. It's been very good this evening in Devon. Transparency was excellent and the seeing seemed to be decent, up to x250. I measured 21.27 away from the Milky Way.

I put out the 150mm reflector with a hope of bagging some more of my "missing Messiers", all faint globs in Sagittarius. Last time out I failed to pick them out with the Mak127 against the light dome (probably Plymouth) on the southern horizon. This evening's attempt was made harder by my goto taking the night off, so it was all manual work with SkySafari and a 9x50 finder. Actually, the finder was pretty useless in Sagittarius, being whited out most of the time. Somehow I did manage to find all three of the missing summer globs, M69, M70 and M55 (this last one being surprisingly large).

Aside from these, I took in four Bootes doubles (xi, pi1, Alkalurops and Izar), a new one: HR5815 in Libra, zeta2 CrB, the ever-lovely Wild Duck cluster in Scutum, Albireo and M13.

Just three left on the list now: M79, M68 and M83, which will need to wait a bit.

 

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The recent weather, with occasional rain & showers, although obviously results in many cloudy nights, does seem to give good transparency during the few clear spells. At least that’s what I’m finding. With long dry periods during summer the sky can become a bit stale and hazy. 

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Hi Peter, rain does wash out a lot of the dust etc in the sky. Some of the best nights for transparency for me have come after a weather front has come through. It was still a bit cloudy here last night but I did manage a bit of a sweep through Scorpius. :)

Cheers

Ian

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Virtually nothing to report 😔n a clear night here....🙄 Too light still to see much, but while the scope was cooling, I got a few views of the Moon. Very sharp with my Morpheus 6.5 and 4.5mm. I just got comfortable when it went behind some trees....sigh.

I'll try again later when it's a bit darker.

Edited by cajen2
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Had another quick browse with the 15*70. 

Clocked some of the usual targets e.g.Albireo, M13. 

I think I got a glimpse of M4 in Scorpius.

No sign of T CrB brightening up. 

Cheers

Ian

 

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This weekend I saw: 

- the Moon finally higher up in the sky in the late afternoon / early evening sky (haven't seen the Moon in more than a month - it was too low behind the buildings); however, still to low to be able to observe from my balcony later at night;
- a star with averted vision in the "darkening" sky yesterday night after the final;
- a beautiful alignment of about 10 between bright stars and planets over a span of 10 degrees in the sky (yup, that was my dream last night).

Better than nothing I guess :icon_rolleyes: but yesterday it finally felt like skies are indeed getting darker.

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Out from 11.00 to 1.30  (16th/17th) with the StellaMira 125 f7.8 and Starsense Explorer. Not great conditions, clouds and haze increasing and quite windy, but still had a great session.

Observed quite a few Messier and other objects, and observed several nebula, usually considered more photographic than visual objects. These included the Elephants Trunk. Bubble Neb, Cave Neb and  Cedablad 214.  All with my Morpheus 17.5mm.

What surprised me with these objects was how much of their nebulosity I could actually see  - and I wasn't using a filter.  On the Starsense display you can zoom in and you get a reasonable representation of their shape.  The bullseye targer shows you where you are observing as you move the scope so you can actually be aware of where you are.  This enabled me to check the accuracy,  or not, of my observations.

Clearly they are not colourful and not so intense as images, but I'll certainly be revisiting them with a filter to enhance the views.  Better than I expected, though the SM does give very contrasty views.

The highlight was coming across the Garnet Star as I went from M52 to the Elephent Trunk where it is located.  Wow, I hadn't looked at it for a long and had forgotten how intense the redness is, it was a wonderful sight in a very nice field.  

I had two surprises too.  At 11.18 I saw a bright meteor, about -3, pass slowly from Hercules to a few degrees below Altair.  A short train followed it which varied in brightness before it faded further to the E.  Then at  ll.42 I caught the ISS also heading toward the E.

Finally I had a surprising good view  of Saturn at only about 15 degrees altitude.  I used my binoviewer with 24mm and 16.8mm Orthos, plus x2 barlow.  In better moments the image was very sharp with no CA or any other defect.  The disc showed a couple of belts and some other variations.  Much nicer than I expected in the conditions.

A really enjoyable session.

 

 

 

Edited by paulastro
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Just got back from my talk on double stars to my local astro society. There is bit of high cloud but the Moon and Antares looked good in Binos. 

Cheers

Ian

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Yes, the sun is impressive and peppered with spots. I had a good look yesterday and briefly today. Although today my session was put on hold until the afternoon as just after setting up I was surrounded by vast swarms of fly ants, literally coming out of the ground in my garden 😕

Edited by PeterStudz
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7 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

I had ants crawling out of every crack in my observing patio. Ant powder cured that :wink2:

Or, there is the Al Nagler way 😁

From <i>Universe</i>...

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5 hours ago, Mr Spock said:

Just brought the scope in as I have to go out. Great session under a clear blue sky. I don't think I've seen as many spots!

Those spots were flying 🐜 on the lens 

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Clear here currently.

Pi Aquilae has been a nice split with the Tak FC100-DL this evening. Just that little bit easier than with the TV 85 I used a couple of nights back on the same double star. 1.4 arc seconds is still quite a tight pair for a 100mm though but it's nicely done at 225x and higher.

Quite a good "test binary" for 3 - 4 inch scopes I think.

One of my favourites at this time of year 🙂

The moon was very low and was tinted as @Stu1smartcookie captures above. Features were quite sharp through the scope though, despite the low elevation.

 

 

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Just been comparing the views of M27 (Dumbbell Nebula) using a decent UHC filter vs no filter with 100mm aperture. Quite a marked difference with the "apple core" shape of the nebula standing out much more clearly against the starry background with the filter in place. An O-III filter produced a brighter central area of the nebula but at the expense of the trademark "lobed" appearance to some extent. I'm preferring the UHC this evening over both the O-III and unfiltered 🙂

Much more like an apple core than a dumbbell, IMHO 🙄

I'll have a go at the Veil nebula next but from previous experience, I suspect that the O-III will win on that one ! 

 

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Interesting cloud coming in from the SW with an obvious sharp edge. What looks like a front, but very slow moving. Smartphone picture taken at 23:58. The bright star to the left is Altair and it’s taken about 15 mins to reach it. Slowly but surely closing down my sky 😕

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49 minutes ago, John said:

Just been comparing the views of M27 (Dumbbell Nebula) using a decent UHC filter vs no filter with 100mm aperture. Quite a marked difference with the "apple core" shape of the nebula standing out much more clearly against the starry background with the filter in place. An O-III filter produced a brighter central area of the nebula but at the expense of the trademark "lobed" appearance to some extent. I'm preferring the UHC this evening over both the O-III and unfiltered 🙂

Much more like an apple core than a dumbbell, IMHO 🙄

I'll have a go at the Veil nebula next but from previous experience, I suspect that the O-III will win on that one ! 

 

For me, in my rather light polluted back garden, a UHC makes a massive different on M27. Even with my 200p Dob without a filter it’s just a faint ill defined smudge which is very easy to miss. However, using a UHC filter it’s obvious with the “apple core” shape and in plain sight.

With my little grab-and-go SkyHawk 1145p and without a filter, I need a really good night to see it at all. But with a UHC it’s obvious and not that far off what I can see in the 200p when using a filter. It’s the difference it made in this small telescope that surprised me the most.

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I had a 102mm f/6.5 refractor out this morning a couple of hours before sunrise in the hopes of getting a good view of Saturn, and while I got a view it wasn’t good. Seeing was abysmal and the only thing about Saturn that was Saturnesq was that it wasn’t quite completely perfectly round.

But the sky was cloud free and full of the night bodies that will predominate later in the year so out came a pair of 8x40 binoculars. The bright Pleiades, which caught my attention first, were gorgeously framed in the wide field against a black background. There’s  Perseus so across a leg and up and there was the bright nucleus of Andromeda, easily seen and with streaks of dim light extending out from either side. Checked in SkySafari and compared against several nearby stars for scale, I found that I was seeing about half of Andromeda’s illuminated diameter. Not too bad for my light polluted suburban back yard.

Binoculars could only reach so deep, and the 102mm refractor’s field of view was only so wide, so next up was the Orion ST80. I don’t know whether the ST80 is as popular in Europe as it is here so for those unfamiliar with the scope, or perhaps new to astronomy, the ST80 is a cheap and cheerful 80mm f/5 crown and flint achromat refractor known for its light weight, very wide field of view, and generous chromatic aberration. Chromatic aberration can certainly be present, though sometimes it’s a bit overstated, but with a 32mm Plössl giving a 12.5X magnification in a 4° field of view chromatic aberration wasn’t going to be an issue anyway.

Back to Saturn again, yup, still a white blob, then Mars, appropriately red, and a very short hop to the right and there’s Uranus, with just a hint of pale blue. Jupiter was sneaking up in between a pair of Cypress trees, and very low near the horizon, so it like Saturn appeared as a whiteish blob with two of its Galilean moons just visible with the help of averted vision. Neptune was close to Saturn, so back to up Saturn as the anchor for a short left-hand star hop through a scant field of dim stars and there it was, disguised as a dim star amongst other dim stars but still positively identified.

Cassiopeia was up pretty high so that meant so was the Double Cluster, which showed as a quite pretty scattering of numerous stars in two not particularly distinct groupings. Still very pretty.

By now the sun was just getting ready to dim the eastern horizon but as Jupiter had climbed a bit I thought it worth another look. A little better, not much, but a little, but what really caught my attention was a very nice scattering of fairly bright stars immediate to it’s right. Beautiful! What I learned a few minutes later, after I had stowed my gear and had a peek at SkySafari, was that I had observed the rising Hyades.

What I enjoyed most about this morning’s observing is that it provided a harbinger of the exciting things to come in the fall and early winter. New stars, new clusters, planets and nebula, but old friends I hadn’t seen in months and a pleasure to welcome again in our ever changing night sky.

 

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Last thing last night ahead of an early start this morning I gave first light to my new-to-me 18x70 binoculars. Despite the full moon, and completely handheld, I was able easily to split Mizar, see shape in the ISS as it happened to pass just then, split and vividly see the colours on Albireo. In the twilight M31 was only a smudge and no-shows for M81/2 or M51. Moon was low SSW behind my trees. But so many more stars were on show than my 15x56s that I can tell these bins are going to give me a lot of joy. Cannot wait for first dark light!

Magnus

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Saturn, Mars and Jupiter at 4:30am this morning with my Skymax 127. I woke up early but the sky was getting brighter by the minute and I decided to give the planets a go. Saturn looks very different from last year: a pinhead with a dash across. I could see Titan and Rhea as well in the twilight. Next stop was Mars. An even smaller orange pinhead. I thought I spotted some dark marking but it was not conclusive. 

Jupiter was still low at 4:30am and I could just see the main belts and the four Galilean moons. Interestingly Io looked distincty orange in the bright sky, better than other times in darkness. All in all good early start of this planetary season! 

Edited by Nik271
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