What did you see tonight?

[Johnny81]

Not much... trying to clear up some doubles in Hercules before the constellation completely clears off buuuuutt mid/high cloud blanket by 21:20 in Northants (can just about see the summer triangle stars but not much else).

Hello everyone by the way - my first post but been star watching for years. There's probably a welcome section but have to grumble about cloud somewhere...

[Nik271]

Had a brief look for T CrB with binoculars. Can't even see it in the murk. There is some high cloud which makes all except the brightest stars invisible. Saturn is invisible naked eye. Found it with my Skymax 127 but it's very dim. No sign of Titan. Stellarium says Titan will pass a few arcseconds north of Saturn tonight, but the weather is not cooperating.

[Jim Franklin]

1 minute ago, Nik271 said:

Had a brief look for T CrB with binoculars. Can't even see it in the murk. There is some high cloud which makes all except the brightest stars invisible. Saturn is invisible naked eye. Found it with my Skymax 127 but it's very dim. No sign of Titan. Stellarium says Titan will pass a few arcseconds north of Saturn tonight, but the weather is not cooperating.

I know the feeling, I was just outside (Littlemore) and the seeing here is no different - hardly surprising as I would guess we are only 1-4 miles apart - clouds are getting denser after midnight apparently...

[Captain Scarlet]

Solid cloud forecast so imagine my surprise when I went outside at 2300 to see clear sky. High wind so I put on a coat, grabbed my 18x70s and headed to the sheltered side, where I keep a garden chair for just this.

Mizar/Alcor & Sidus Ludoviciana, M81/2, M51, M101, M103, M52, Airplane asterism, Double Cluster, Saturn, M31, M32 and starting to get hazy again so barely a hint of M110. But a good crop in a 5 minute cloud gap.

Magnus

[Nik271]

Mars and Jupiter right now, 6am with Skymax 127. Seeing was decent, I used my 9mm EP for x170 and Jupiter displayed multiple bands. All four Galilean moons were on one side in a lozenge formation.

Mars was small of course. I could see the gibbous shape and a hint of white in the north, must be the polar clouds.

A short rewarding session at dawn 😀

Edited September 11 by Nik271

[Jim Franklin]

6 hours ago, Nik271 said:

Mars and Jupiter right now, 6am with Skymax 127. Seeing was decent, I used my 9mm EP for x170 and Jupiter displayed multiple bands. All four Galilean moons were on one side in a lozenge formation.

Mars was small of course. I could see the gibbous shape and a hint of white in the north, must be the polar clouds.

A short rewarding session at dawn 😀

Typical - had an important meeting this morning and needed to be up early - went to bed at 22:00hrs as a result - found out the sky cleared - 🙄

[PeterC65]

The rain clouds unexpectedly disappeared over the horizon as it was getting dark last night so I setup the 72mm refractor and Pentax 55mm lens for another EAA session. Last time the Pentax was a bit disappointing, but after fitting it with a UV/IR cut filter and a dew strap (it was very damp outside), and setting the aperture to F5.6 at the suggestion of @Elp, it performed brilliantly.

I had some amazing widefield views which I could match to the greater detail that the refractor was showing me. The best of the night was the Heart and Soul Nebulae, IC1805 and IC1848, together with the Double Cluster, NGC884 and NGC869. Here it is with a little post processing.

IC1805 & IC1848 & NGC869 & NGC884

The full report is here.

 

[bosun21]

13 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:

The rain clouds unexpectedly disappeared over the horizon as it was getting dark last night so I setup the 72mm refractor and Pentax 55mm lens for another EAA session. Last time the Pentax was a bit disappointing, but after fitting it with a UV/IR cut filter and a dew strap (it was very damp outside), and setting the aperture to F5.6 at the suggestion of @Elp, it performed brilliantly.

I had some amazing widefield views which I could match to the greater detail that the refractor was showing me. The best of the night was the Heart and Soul Nebulae, IC1805 and IC1848, together with the Double Cluster, NGC884 and NGC869. Here it is with a little post processing.

IC1805 & IC1848 & NGC869 & NGC884

The full report is here.

 

Very nice Peter. @Elp sure knows his way around lenses for AP and EAA.

[Mr Spock]

Some patchy cloud, but mostly clear. The scope is out cooling.

Currently 8.1°, so I'll need the big coat 🥶

[Elp]

57 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

Very nice Peter. @Elp sure knows his way around lenses for AP and EAA.

I wish I did. I think I've always preferred camera lenses really, take up less space and can carry out a whole setup assembled easily.

[Mr Spock]

I've come in for a warm! Also to get my gloves - it feels really cold!

Seeing is mushy, so I won't be doing much anyway.

[John]

 It is chillier outside tonight !

I've just popped the Heritage 130p out for some low power scanning on a rather wobbly table top. 

Transparency seems rather good so the showpiece early autumn DSO's are showing well.

I'll pop out again later for Saturn but I suspect the seeing will not be great.

[Ratlet]

Enjoying the reports.  I'm just off night shift yesterday (14*12 hour shifts) so I'm giving it a miss again tonight.  Need to get a bit of distance between the Nightshift or I'll never come off.

[Jim Franklin]

Today took me out and about, at Sunset I found myself on a byway near to Stonehenge - its good to drive a Land Rover..

Anyway, I decided to take a shot of the stones with the heavens in the background - The image of the Stones is actually two seperate shots then stacked - First of the stones was to get them looking good, the second was to get the Sky right as initially it simply did not work. The camera in all three cases was my Canon EOS5DmkIII. The Stonehenge images were taken using my 18-70mm l;ens set at infinity - stones at 1/50th  at ISO1600, the sky image was taken with the same equipment, but the ISO was upped to 6400 and the speed was 3 seconds. 

The Black and white image was taken as a single shot. EOS5DmkIII on ETX90 via a 42mm Revelation Projection eyepiece. ISO600 -1/125th second.  The more colourful image is 15 stacked images - same setup as the Black and white with the exception that I 15 of the images had as #12 Yellow filter, 15 with #26A Red, 15 with #56 Green and 15 Moon/Neutral Density - I then took the best images, stacked them and processed the final images - it says 15x  I just noticed, but I think it was only 12 that were actually used for the final image. It needs more work to get a final image - but off to bed again as early start!!

No Early start Friday thankfully, so if it is clear tomorrow night - which apparently it will be - then I will be doing some more imaging. 

[lunator]

Had a short session. Had a quick look at my recently returned and now reassembled 114 Newt. I am going to use it for an observing evening but it still needs a few tweaks....

Got observing on my permanent set up but as Michael said the seeing was very soft and anything below 2-3  arcseconds was tricky. I did catch a couple of new doubles and one old favourite. 

Still no sign of T CrB popping

cheers

Ian

[John]

40 minutes ago, John said:

 It is chillier outside tonight !

I've just popped the Heritage 130p out for some low power scanning on a rather wobbly table top. 

Transparency seems rather good so the showpiece early autumn DSO's are showing well.

I'll pop out again later for Saturn but I suspect the seeing will not be great.

Saturn is not actually looking too bad from here. Got 5 moons from that wobbly table top !

Blue Snowball Nebula also looked nice. 1st night for ages when I've been able to see a decent length of the milky way and the Andromeda Galaxy with the naked eye. 

[Stu]

It’s a stunning night out there tonight in terms of transparency, best I’ve seen for a long time. No observing for me unfortunately but I had a nice gawp up at the Milky Way which was clearly visible over head from my garden, the Cygnus rift very obvious. It looked as good as from the camp site in Cornwall which is great! It’s always been a dream of mine to be able to see it from my house, and now I can!

I spotted a cracking meteor too, very bright with a trail and quite slow moving; it was visible for five of six seconds at least.

Obligatory iPhone shot for the record.

[RobertI]

The transparency is indeed excellent out there tonight. Just popped out for a quick session to test my new Maxbrights for some low power views - I was not disappointed, beautiful stereo views of the double cluster, ET cluster, M31 (very extended) M32 and M110 all in the same FOV and M33 also easily visible. The Maxbrights are wonderful to use and I’ll do a fuller report when my new eyepieces arrive and I have a longer session. The good news is I have plenty of focus travel left, so I believe I can use a 1.25x GPC to enable some even lower power wide field views, which is why I bought them. 👍

Edited September 11 by RobertI

[IB20]

A quick look at Saturn with the 76Q. Tethys, Rhea and Titan all visible. Faint Iapetus spotted 2-3 times but weirdly not picking up Dione on the other side. 🤷🏼 Intermittent clouds rolling by and annoying a little drizzle so have packed up. 

[Paul M]

Great sky here on the Fylde, beteween the hammering showers..

So my entire activity continues to be my remote allsky camera. It's clear again in the skys above central cumbria. I just had a peek at what the camera was looking at and caught Fomalhaut trying to hide behind a pylon! There's Saturn too, stealing the limelight.

I've spotted this souhern star a few times visually, one of those difficult targets, its altitude is less than 6 deg as seen here just a few minutes before culmination. That Pylon pretty much marks the S cardinal point.

There is also a very weak aurora tonight, but barely showing on the camera and It's cropped out of the frame anyway...

Edited September 12 by Paul M

[Mr Spock]

I didn't stay out long - couldn't be bothered. I'd rather be in the house...

Seeing is mushy anyway, and I haven't got the transparency everyone else has. There's a thin smoky veil over everything 

[PeterC65]

Two nights of EAA in a row!

Last night I was out again with the 72mm refractor and Pentax 55mm lens, this time a little earlier before the Milky Way disappeared below the hill.

More wonderful widefield views of objects that are just too big for any of my scopes, like Cr39, but the highlight was my first proper view of the Pillars of Creation in M16. I could make out the detail even with the 72mm refractor.

Tonight is looking clear again so I’m planning to give it a go with the 8” Newtonian.

[bosun21]

Some nice detail on show Peter. Is this captured using your L Enhance? What focal length is your 72mm refractor and are you using a reducer with it? Sorry for all the questions.

[PeterC65]

1 hour ago, bosun21 said:

Some nice detail on show Peter. Is this captured using your L Enhance? What focal length is your 72mm refractor and are you using a reducer with it? Sorry for all the questions.

Yes I was using the L-eNhance filter. The focal length is 432mm with no reducer, but a x1.0 field flattener. The stack was 77 x 8s exposures at a gain of x400 (half way point on my Uranus-C). No darks or flats but I was using SharpCap hot pixel removal and had Background Subtraction set to Non-Linear Gradient Removal. The image I posted was what I was seeing on the night.

[Captain Scarlet]

Beside myself with excitement. All forecasts agree, it’s going to be a good night. SV140/GPD2 set up and ready to go.

The last four times I’ve done this ahead of time, it’s been cloudy by the time I’ve gone out. Fingers crossed.