What did you see tonight?

[scotty1]

AAAAAAAAARRRRGH!!!!!! *******

20.20 24/10/2024

Taking some widefield photos of Comet A3, while waiting for an aircraft to exit the frame , a bright fireball meteor tracked across the milky way, lasted around three seconds, passed above Comet A3 from Vega to Altair. Had my remote shutter on a three second delay, so missed the meteor. Normally I use continuous shooting! 🤬 Packed up straight after, and swore all the way home 🙃( 4 miles)  Someone must of seen or photographed this meteor. Estimate it was mag - 6 when breaking up. 

 

https://ukmon.imo.net/imo_view/event/2024/6309 

 

Edited Friday at 11:37 by scotty1

[Ags]

I was imaging in the neighbourhood, so I stopped in for a look at Navi's remarkable spectrum with its strong Ha emission line:

Edited Friday at 00:53 by Ags

[josefk]

10 hours ago, Nyctimene said:

Just came in from the third session with my newest member of the Dob family - an Orion 4 12" f/4 StarBlast, that I bought used for 120€ from ebay. Arrived Tuesday in excellent condition, almost new and rarely used. Was very impressed by the "snap" focus it delivers, and started immediately with the double Pi Aquilae (1.4"), that could be split with a clear dark gap at the magnification of 337x (Svbony Zoom 3 mmf + Baader Turret Barlow 2.25x) in moments of good seeing (which was good anyway this evening). M 31 showed itself magnificent in the 3.56° field of the 26/62° ES LER, along with both companions 32 and 110. M 33 remained dim, without inner structure, but I was able to make out repeatedly the H II region NGC 604 as a fleeting spot with AV (an 11 mag star TYC 2293..... just SE came in the way). No trace of gx 891 and 404. M 34; M 45; Gamma And showed it's beautiful colour contrast. Saturn, with Titan and 10.1 mag Rhea, showed some banding on it's disc, and even the Cassini division could be glimpsed several times in the ansae. Repeated some of the observations yesterday with similar results, all under sub-average skies with NELM of 4.8 mag. Very pleased with the newcomer, which will service as another grab-and-go,or outreach scope (replaces on the sturdy mount a very mediocre 4 12" spherical mirror Newton).

Tested this evening my pupil diameters with the "drill bit method", and assessed a width of 6 mm for both eyes - quite good at age of 72.

Thanks for reading

Stephan

Great set of varied targets there Stephan and a lovely purposeful looking set-up. Cool. 

[Bodkin]

The comet is looking lovely in my 30x125 vixen binos.  My first viewing due to typical mid Wales weather, but worth the wait. 
M33, the veil, M13, M57, M27 and the wild duck cluster also looking fine. 

[Zermelo]

I finally got a clear Western horizon this evening to see the comet for the first time. It wasn't difficult to find in 10x50s.

[Stu1smartcookie]

8 hours ago, Zermelo said:

I finally got a clear Western horizon this evening to see the comet for the first time. It wasn't difficult to find in 10x50s.

I’ve not seen it yet .. and I won’t be home until tomorrow night .. how long is it visible for ? 

[Jim L]

Looked at Cronus last night through a 400mm f/12.5 doublet refractor. The seeing and transparency were decent and I could see some banding on the disk and space between the disk and rings. It was quite a nice image.

The scope was made in 1902 and is located at the National Observatory of Athens. At 5 tons, including mount, and 5 meters focal length it is not a grab-and-go setup, but a beautiful old monster. With a 30mm eyepiece magnification was around 167x.

Tracking with the German equatorial mount was excellent and you could do pull-ups hanging off the end of the scope without detecting any shaking at the eyepiece. A very impressive and still capable instrument 122 years after it was made.

[Zermelo]

1 hour ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

I’ve not seen it yet .. and I won’t be home until tomorrow night .. how long is it visible for ? 

Just checking in SkySafari, it should  fade quite slowly, moving across Ophiuchus into Serpens mid November.

[Stu1smartcookie]

1 hour ago, Zermelo said:

Just checking in SkySafari, it should  fade quite slowly, moving across Ophiuchus into Serpens mid November.

Many thanks … I’ve been in Russia for 10 days and the weather apart from 3 days has been , actually unusually , shocking for the time of year. Not too many opportunities to look at celestial objects . I am really looking forward to being home and get back to pointing a scope to the sky .

[Littleguy80]

Grabbed 20 minutes on Jupiter when the clouds briefly cleared last week. Seeing was the best I’ve seen for awhile. As a result, Jupiter was really sharp with lots of detail including Io’s shadow. Really enjoyable and has definitely encouraged me to make more of these short opportunities 

[Johnny81]

Spent over an hour and a half in the garden - a clear evening over Northants (for now) but the sky was horrific... like brown sludge. It did start to improve but made my jaunt for doubles in Aquarius hell, but luckily Saturn was a good guide because the finder dewed up in less than 40 mins (probably a record coupled with a lack of any scope cooling).

[John]

Doubles, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune plus Messier 33 and NGC 404 with my ED120 so far tonight. Testing an old EQ mount with the scope so some time is being spent "tweaking" as I go.

Seeing not the best though - a bit shaky on Saturn and Jupiter. 

[lunator]

Saturn and some doubles for me. The seeing was good to begin with but has now deteriorated. 

Cheers

Ian

[Ratlet]

Jupiter was tempting me the whole way home from work so I decided to test out the 2" polariser in the 2" to 1.25" adapter and with the 1.25" polariser in the eyepiece.

The seeing was not great, but not too bad.  The filter combo was very good though nice to be able to finely tune the brightness.  For once the GRS was visible and I'm going to put this down as my first concrete observation as even without knowing it was there you couldn't miss it.

Decided to test it out on the the Devil's flashlight Luna and boy howdy was she pretty.  It's been so long since I've observed the moon at anything other than full.  It feels so flat when it's full but the terminator provides so much life to it, shadows and craters wherever you look and mountains in the middle.  Not great seeing at all but got me fired up nicely.

[AlcorAlly]

Doubles in Cygnus with 8x42 binoculars. Omicron Cygni shown a nice colour contrast - blue and orange, with a tiny third star, very pleasing sight. I was surprised to see that Cyg 61 was resolved - two small bright orange stars, very close to each other but clearly separated. 

[Stu]

Managed to pop the scope out quickly and finally caught the comet, having only seen it once in binoculars before. Nice views, sky was pretty transparent. I dragged Lorna out in her Jim Jams for a look and she could tell me which direction the tail was going in so I knew she was seeing it properly.

[josefk]

I think it’s fair to say I’ve got quite a bit of log and sketch catching-up to do today after a few coffees:

An absolutely outstanding night - not the conditions exactly but everything just seemed to go perfectly. Just goes to show because I was driving through fog banks leaving town all loaded up and I assumed I would be washing out before even setting up. 

Managed  a sketch of Jupiter every hour or hour and fifteen minutes or so starting at 02:00 GMT till 06:00 and before that bagged two globular clusters in M31. Yippee. 
 

Link added to the long version over here: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/426996-herschels-extragalactic-treats-jupiter-24th-october-24/#comment-4526544

 

Edited 22 hours ago by josefk

[AlcorAlly]

57 minutes ago, josefk said:

starting at 02:00 GMT till 06:00

How do you manage with no sleep? 😯

[Zermelo]

Dew forced an early end to proceedings last night. The Mak's passive shield normally copes, but I really need to get my controller unit built, now that I live a few hundred yards from a river.

I did manage a few wider doubles though. STF 552, STF 301 in Perseus, STF 396 and STF 550 in Camelopardalis, STF 2755 in Aquarius. Tighter triple iota Cas was as lovely as ever. Saturn was showing quite a bit of scatter, which I put down to local mistiness. I had another look at the comet, which was not quite as obvious as the previous night in the binoculars.

 

[josefk]

29 minutes ago, AlcorAlly said:

How do you manage with no sleep? 😯

Surprisingly well. Really surprisingly. Easy day yesterday beforehand though and a super easy day today (lunch at my son's) and possibly an afternoon nap with a rugby game on the telly - what's not to like 🙂 

Edited 23 hours ago by josefk

[Les Ewan]

Mainly concentrated on Jupiter this morning to witness a transit of Ganymede.The  sky was very clear but the Jovian surface details were not and conditions got slowly worse as the night progressed. A blue filter made things a bit clearer but seeing Ganymede in front of Jupiter was not possible(for me at least.)😒

It was a fairly warm session (around 4C) but it was unpleasently breezy but at least that meant there was hardly any dewing.

[Johnny81]

30 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

Dew forced an early end to proceedings last night. The Mak's passive shield normally copes

I find 2hours possibly 3 max on a 127 with tightly fitted shield. Was 98% humidity here apparently so no wonder that I had a bad session! 

 

[Mr Spock]

Currently out with the 120 doing solar. Seeing is very wobbly but there's some great spots on view.

[PeterStudz]

I was out last night and into the early hours. In Southampton seeing was initially horrific. But for Jupiter I could make out the shadow transit of Ganymede, roughly halfway over the disc at 23:40pm. Seeing improved as the shadow neared the limb. After that I was plagued by mist and fog and it was like looking through soup, so after trying some other targets I reluctantly packed up. Still, seeing a shadow transit isn’t bad!

[Elara]

On 24/10/2024 at 21:26, Nyctimene said:

Just came in from the third session with my newest member of the Dob family - an Orion 4 12" f/4 StarBlast, that I bought used for 120€ from ebay. Arrived Tuesday in excellent condition, almost new and rarely used. Was very impressed by the "snap" focus it delivers, and started immediately with the double Pi Aquilae (1.4"), that could be split with a clear dark gap at the magnification of 337x (Svbony Zoom 3 mmf + Baader Turret Barlow 2.25x) in moments of good seeing (which was good anyway this evening). M 31 showed itself magnificent in the 3.56° field of the 26/62° ES LER, along with both companions 32 and 110. M 33 remained dim, without inner structure, but I was able to make out repeatedly the H II region NGC 604 as a fleeting spot with AV (an 11 mag star TYC 2293..... just SE came in the way). No trace of gx 891 and 404. M 34; M 45; Gamma And showed it's beautiful colour contrast. Saturn, with Titan and 10.1 mag Rhea, showed some banding on it's disc, and even the Cassini division could be glimpsed several times in the ansae. Repeated some of the observations yesterday with similar results, all under sub-average skies with NELM of 4.8 mag. Very pleased with the newcomer, which will service as another grab-and-go,or outreach scope (replaces on the sturdy mount a very mediocre 4 12" spherical mirror Newton).

Tested this evening my pupil diameters with the "drill bit method", and assessed a width of 6 mm for both eyes - quite good at age of 72.

Thanks for reading

Stephan

That’s a lovely looking scope, with a wonderful stone plinth!