What did you see tonight?

[Emperor!Takahashi!]

After moving out of the city and to a new home where I have a backyard and significantly darker skies, I enjoyed the first truly satisfying observing session I've had in about 18 months.

I spent four hours visiting some of my favorites across the sky and was especially captivated by Saturn and its moons (and the shadow that the body of the planet casts on the rings), Herschel's Garnet Star (which I find so beautiful), the Double Cluster, and the Wild Duck Cluster. They're all such good friends.

It was also fun to put my new setup through the paces. It was a chilly evening, and the Mewlon needed a couple of hours to fully cool even though I left it in a shaded shed in the morning. For the first two hours, the FS-102 made the unacclimated Mewlon seem like a mushy old light bucket. But after those two hours, the acclimated Mewlon made the FS-102 seem like a very (very) nice finderscope 😁

Edited 2 hours ago by Emperor!Takahashi!

[Captain Scarlet]

Just in from having packed up after quite a long session, 2200 until 0130 with my Stellarvue 140 on GPD2. Saturn captivating with Rhea and Tethys clearly on show, Enceladus too close to Tethys, I think, to tell it apart. I tried putting my BCO 6 through its paces but the eye lens is greasy! I need to clean it. First proper use of my Tak TOE 2.5 for 375x which occasionally was OK on Saturn.

Jupiter still too low, GRS was there but I couldn’t see it. Eps Lyrae, as a seeing check, was easily split but not the best. Fighting with occasional bands of cloud.

Took ages to find Uranus but got there in the end, I couldn’t discern any colour but an obvious disc.

M31 and friends plus M33 through the 18x70 bins.

Supposedly cold but I went bare-fingered the whole time with no problems.

Magnus