What did you see tonight?

[Franklin]

39 minutes ago, John said:

the 130mm is a long scope so some crouching will be inevitable - must mind my back ! 😬

If you lower the tripod legs so the eyepiece, straight through, is about a foot off the ground and then lay down beneath on a yoga mat to view, your back will thank you🤣.

Edited May 29, 2023 by Franklin

[Franklin]

Out testing my ultra-light grab n go set up tonight and I'm amazed at what 55mm of aperture can do. This Fluorite stuff is great, absolutely amazing high contrast, clean and crisp views of the lunar terminator, albeit at low powers. Clavius looked stunning at max power (85x tee-hee) and to the South, huge dark shadows in Blancanus, Scheine and the surrounding area looked like gunshot wounds on the Moon. Can't wait to get this rig up a hill for a night.

 

IMG_4143.CR2 IMG_4138.CR2

Edited May 29, 2023 by Franklin

[Mr Spock]

Snap of the moon through the 12". Not as sharp as I'd like due to the poor seeing.

[John]

33 minutes ago, Franklin said:

If you lower the tripod legs so the eyepiece, straight through, is about a foot off the ground and then lay down beneath on a yoga mat to view, your back will thank you🤣.

Thanks for that useful tip !!! 

I've just switched to my 102mm Vixen ED F/6.5 frac to have a look at the SN. Eyepiece is at a decent height even when observing the zenith with that one 🙂

[Nik271]

It was definitely a night for lunar domes for me: Hortensius domes, Kies Pi and for the first time for me: the Capuanus domes. I learned about them while browsing 'The 21 century atlas of the Moon' They are showing well tonight. I used my 100ed at 180x, the seeing did not allow for more here.

[Stu]

7 hours ago, Nik271 said:

Capuanus domes

Thanks for the tip, not heard to them before 👍

[Nik271]

They were mentioned briefly in the 21 century Atlas on plate 23 under the caption discussing Kies Pi.

This morning I found this paper on them:

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/1443.pdf

It says there are three domes of height only 100 meters. I saw at least two of them very clearly at about 10pm last night with x180 magnification.

The view was actualy better than this simulated view.

 

 

[John]

1 hour ago, Nik271 said:

They were mentioned briefly in the 21 century Atlas on plate 23 under the caption discussing Kies Pi.

This morning I found this paper on them:

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/1443.pdf

It says there are three domes of height only 100 meters. I saw at least two of them very clearly at about 10pm last night with x180 magnification.

The view was actualy better than this simulated view.

 

 

Thanks for that - I noticed those on the floor of the crater but I didn't know their names 🙂

 

[Zermelo]

It may be clear later on, but I decided not to stay up late tonight.

Instead, I set up the binoviewer with the Mak on the AZ-GTiX for the first time, and spent a pleasant half hour on the moon at lower magnifications.

Gassendi is showing nicely on the terminator, the rim and central peaks picked out.  Further north, the Jura Mountains are also looking good, and Herschel and its companions are just making an appearance.

 

 

[Epick Crom]

I witnessed a breathtaking lunar occultation of Porrima (Gamma Virginis) last night. The double star became a single star for a split second as the lunar limb covered it. 

The reappearance was equally spectacular, one star peeked out from behind the bright limb followed by its companion a split second later. This was by far the most beautiful lunar occultation I have seen so far 😍

[John]

23 minutes ago, Epick Crom said:

I witnessed a breathtaking lunar occultation of Porrima (Gamma Virginis) last night. The double star became a single star for a split second as the lunar limb covered it. 

The reappearance was equally spectacular, one star peeked out from behind the bright limb followed by its companion a split second later. This was by far the most beautiful lunar occultation I have seen so far 😍

That must have been a wonderful sight Joe 🙂

Porrima is a lovely star to observe at any time but when one of it's components is occulted by the moon it must make compelling viewing !

Thanks for the report 👍

[cloudsweeper]

 MOON - TRYING SEVERAL EPs - BOOTES DOUBLES - GLOB M3

7.55pm Tues., 8" Cat/Focal Reducer/GoTo.  Moon east of south, 3 days past 1st quarter.  Not a great deal of detail then, so I decided to play around with several eyepieces.  Field, mag, presence of central obstruction (bright object, low power), and Ring of Fire effect (wide angle EP, bright object, low power) all offered differing views.  

I sometimes thought (at higher mags) that the Plossls gave a cleaner, silvery view compared with the slightly orange-tinged views in the wider angle EPs, probably due to the light conditions.

The 20/100 Myriad and 17.5/76 Morpheus gave excellent views, with 1 - 1.5deg of field, and about x70.

9.00pm - more detail became evident.  Plato (off-terminator) followed westwards by the smaller Bliss, then a line of four still smaller craters.  Going then from x85 to x128 with the 10mm Hyperion, still finer detail was spotted in that region - a lovely view.  Similar with the 8mm Hyp at x160.  The 6mm TV Radian showed great detail at x213, although focusing became more critical.  By x256, sharpness was fading.

9.30pm - break until 10.25.  Then, Bootes doubles:

Sigma 1873 (not in handset, so via 31 Boo) - 8th mag pair, 6.4 arcsec separation.  Going from search view (x36) to x64, I just got the split - very close, a near match (though both faint), side by side.  Better at x85 in a Plossl - sharp, nice.

Sigma 1886 - 7th and 9th mags, 7.4 arcsec.  x51 - not sure.  Plossl at x64 - yes!  Sharp, very close, secondary very faint and at 8 o'clock.

I finished with a look at glob M3 (CVn) which usually looks good with resolved stars around a core, but owing to the nearness of the Moon, the fuzzy patch only revealed slight resolution of stars at x160, 213.

11.25pm - finished.  A very pleasing and instructive session.

Doug.

[Stu1smartcookie]

For information ... Most of us living on the East side of the country have seen very little apart from thick cloud !! zzz 

I still enjoy reading the reports of others with more luck than us , though . 

 

[wookie1965]

4 hours ago, cloudsweeper said:

 MOON - TRYING SEVERAL EPs - BOOTES DOUBLES - GLOB M3

7.55pm Tues., 8" Cat/Focal Reducer/GoTo.  Moon east of south, 3 days past 1st quarter.  Not a great deal of detail then, so I decided to play around with several eyepieces.  Field, mag, presence of central obstruction (bright object, low power), and Ring of Fire effect (wide angle EP, bright object, low power) all offered differing views.  

I sometimes thought (at higher mags) that the Plossls gave a cleaner, silvery view compared with the slightly orange-tinged views in the wider angle EPs, probably due to the light conditions.

The 20/100 Myriad and 17.5/76 Morpheus gave excellent views, with 1 - 1.5deg of field, and about x70.

9.00pm - more detail became evident.  Plato (off-terminator) followed westwards by the smaller Bliss, then a line of four still smaller craters.  Going then from x85 to x128 with the 10mm Hyperion, still finer detail was spotted in that region - a lovely view.  Similar with the 8mm Hyp at x160.  The 6mm TV Radian showed great detail at x213, although focusing became more critical.  By x256, sharpness was fading.

9.30pm - break until 10.25.  Then, Bootes doubles:

Sigma 1873 (not in handset, so via 31 Boo) - 8th mag pair, 6.4 arcsec separation.  Going from search view (x36) to x64, I just got the split - very close, a near match (though both faint), side by side.  Better at x85 in a Plossl - sharp, nice.

Sigma 1886 - 7th and 9th mags, 7.4 arcsec.  x51 - not sure.  Plossl at x64 - yes!  Sharp, very close, secondary very faint and at 8 o'clock.

I finished with a look at glob M3 (CVn) which usually looks good with resolved stars around a core, but owing to the nearness of the Moon, the fuzzy patch only revealed slight resolution of stars at x160, 213.

11.25pm - finished.  A very pleasing and instructive session.

Doug.

Nice haul Sigma 1873 co ordinates are 14h 44.8m   +07° 42`   you can put them in the handset as a new object.

[cloudsweeper]

24 minutes ago, wookie1965 said:

Nice haul Sigma 1873 co ordinates are 14h 44.8m   +07° 42`   you can put them in the handset as a new object.

Thanks Paul - not thought of doing that - I just look at a close, bright star on Stellarium, put that in the handset, and hop from there!

Doug.

[John]

Just a quick view of the moon tonight with clouds dominating much of the rest of the sky.

The few minutes I had were rewarding though with Aristarchus, Herodotus and the Vallis Schroteri looking great, the 4 largest craterlets on Plato's floor showing as bright spots and best of all perhaps the magnificent crater Pythagoras with it's impressive central peak casting a long shadow, the illuminated flanks resembling a giant letter "Z" sticking up from the crater floor under this evening's illumination.

I doubt I'll see much else tonight but the above brief lunar excursion was worth putting a scope out for 🙂 

Edited June 1, 2023 by John

[Zermelo]

A bit of an odd evening here, but well worth going out.

There was quite a bit of wind that came and went the whole time, but the seeing was good when the scope settled, and transparency was also good, until a huge cloud bank appeared out of nowhere and covered the sky at around 01:00.

There was the moon all evening of course, but low down at the moment - these nights are the only time I'm glad for my obstructed southern horizon. Once it was out of direct sight, I managed to split a dozen or so doubles with the Mak 127.

The tightest were HR 7184 in Draco and HR 6980 in Hercules, both at 0.8", and at the limit for the Mak (x500 in the Svbony 3-8 zoom).  HD 161016 at 0.7" was too much to split, but even that was resolved. Sarin (δ Her) was pleasing, with its five magnitudes of difference, and 95 Her was showing a subtle pink/grey contrast.  ρ Her was an even more subtle white/beige.

The Svbony zoom was very effective again, sometimes showing less scatter than the Morpheus.

[John]

Just a short session with the ED120 tonight. Short due to social engagements earlier this evening and an early start tomorrow AM.

Managed to see supernova SN 2023ixf in Messier 101 again. I compared it carefully with stars in the same field of view and felt that the closest comparable in brightness was magnitude 11.4 so that is my estimate of the supernova's visual brightness this evening. Barely a trace of the host galaxy on show though, probably due to the not completely dark sky and a bright moon towards the south.

 

[paulastro]

MARS AMONGST THE BEES.

Also posted in Observing Wide Field Events.

 

[jock1958]

A very quick session using the Tak FC-100DL, BV's & Pentax 8.5's on Venus. Started off about 8.45pm just before it was naked eye visible, atmosphere was steady and Venus was crisp and sharp, unfortunately was unable to detect any cloud formations with & without filters.

Ditched the BV's in favour of cyclops to view Mars in the Beehive cluster, initially used the the 31mm Big Boy then 14mm Delos but most satisfying views were through the 24mm Panoptic.  

Some strictly amateur at the eyepiece iPhone pics below of Venus through the Pentax 8.5's & BV's using orange & blue filters.

Edited June 4, 2023 by jock1958

[IB20]

A brilliant looking Venus through the Tak 76Q. Venusian horns appear to be protruding slightly and some varying shadows and contrast along the terminator. Some slight red and blue fringing but no visible CA, incredibly impressive control from the little Tak.

3 second video stacked through Videostack app (thanks @PeterStudz)

[Space Hopper]

Did anyone just see a bright moving object passing overhead, (i'm in Derby)  heading East North East at 22:18 / 22:19 hrs ?

I'd say it was similar in brightness to the ISS but moving at 3x the speed. I followed it till it disappeared into the Earths shadow, so i'm assuming it was a satellite.

Also appeared slightly yellowish in colour and certainly not as 'white' as the ISS. But very bright in the twilight sky and way brighter than Vega and Arcturus, which were also visable.

A mystery......

[IB20]

1 hour ago, Space Hopper said:

Did anyone just see a bright moving object passing overhead, (i'm in Derby)  heading East North East at 22:18 / 22:19 hrs ?

I'd say it was similar in brightness to the ISS but moving at 3x the speed. I followed it till it disappeared into the Earths shadow, so i'm assuming it was a satellite.

Also appeared slightly yellowish in colour and certainly not as 'white' as the ISS. But very bright in the twilight sky and way brighter than Vega and Arcturus, which were also visable.

A mystery......

Terra satellite and H-IIA rocket body were both up around that time. 

[Zermelo]

The seeing was very good here tonight.

Doubles split included HR 8119 in Cepheus, being the tightest at 1.0".  The most difficult was 13 Vul, the companion being much fainter, and hiding in the diffraction ring of the brighter component. It was a similar story with λ Oph.  The prettiest was probably β Lyrae (Sheliak) - very wide at 46" and with a three magnitude difference, the fainter star looking blue/grey.

Aside from the doubles, I tried a couple of planetary nebulae, but the moon was washing them out.  I did find the carbon star T Lyrae, which was dim at +8.2, but obviously very red.

[SuburbanMak]

First time out for a while due to work and you know, life. 
Lovely night, out with the Tak 100DC & just a Baader Zoom & Pentax XW 5mm. 
 The rising full moon although low was creating a huge sky glow so confined to some bright favourites. 
Looked at the Double Double - confirming that seeing is very good, although some shake from a gusty breeze from time to time.  

On to the Ring Nebula, M57, resolving well at 8mm (92x) despite the moonlight. 

Lovely colours on Alberio - and at 24mm showing in a rich starfield - still blown away by the Tak’s pinpoint stars. 
M27 - just, nice to pull out low down from the garden but no real form visible. 
M29 - showing a good number of stars with the 5mm (148x). 

Izar - a beautiful sapphire & gold ring in the 5mm (148x) between breeze shakes. 

M13  - showing some sparkles in AV from about 100x on up. A stunning object in all eyepieces. 
 
A short session on the usuals suspects but lovely to be back out there in a cool early summer’s evening.