What did you see tonight?

[badhex]

On 30/09/2023 at 09:49, JeremyS said:

Is that an altazimuth child seat? 🤔

You know my next question. 

But does it have slo-mos? 😂😂😂

[wookie1965]

Supposed to be clear here Saturday night fingers crossed been weeks since I got out. 

[John]

13 minutes ago, wookie1965 said:

Supposed to be clear here Saturday night fingers crossed been weeks since I got out. 

Hope so. I'm pencilled in to do an outreach observing session with Bristol AS on Saturday. They keep getting clouded off - it would be good if one could actually happen !

[Stu1smartcookie]

lucky Stu here !!! So it should be clear Saturday , Sunday and monday in my part of the world ... shame ive chosen this this weekend + to go somewhere where it generally rains a lot   

[Captain Scarlet]

14 hours ago, Epick Crom said:

Hi fellow stargazers!

Sagittarius is still placed well for us south of the equator, so last night I visited this incredible constellation.  Among the highlights were:

M22: Absolutely magnificent, beautiful view at 70x in my 10 inch dob. The resolved stars looked like LED lights in this globular.

Polis ( Mu Sagittarii): A nice double star with fainter companions either side of it.

M25: A stunning messier open cluster. Underated!

M23: Another beautiful underated open cluster in Sagittarius. This looked so nice at 50x using my 24mm Panoptic.

NGC 6567: A new to me planetary nebula, first time seeing it last night. It is nestled close to a faint field star. 534x showed it nicely as a tiny nebulous puff of light.

M24: This is an insane star cloud! So much happening within and around it, I got lost observing in and around it for over an hour, dark lanes, asterisms, packed starfields, multiple stars and even several open clusters reside there. A great visual stimulation!

I ended the night by observing the always stunning Saturn. It looked razor sharp even at 686x. Three of its moon's were in a line on one side, with bright Titan shining on the other side. 

A very satisfying observing session!

 

Clear Skies

Joe

Superb read. Did Saturn’s Moons look like this?

[Epick Crom]

9 hours ago, Captain Scarlet said:

Superb read. Did Saturn’s Moons look like this?

Yes @Captain Scarlet, they looked exactly like that 👍

[SwiMatt]

Yesterday I went out on my balcony and did a quick session with the Mak 127. The forest behind my apartment has lots of streetlights (there are paths going through) and there are lots of apartments behind it, so it's hard to get the eyes well dark adapted. Still, better than nothing...

After testing the transparency and seeing on my go-to triple, Mizar and Alcor, I first unsuccessfully tried to split Epsilon Boötis; I try it from time to time, knowing it's a difficult one that requires good conditions. Then I star-hopped to Mu Boötis (51 Boötis), a double that splits easily in the 25mm (60x, sep 108") with Mu 1 in the North showing a white tone and Mu 2 in the South, of higher magnitude, showing an orange, almost rusty, tone. I did not know that Mu 2 could be split further - however at 2.2" of separation I imagine the split to be challenging. I did increase the magnitude to 200x, but it lost some sharpness and I felt it was much better in the 25mm. Close to there, I encountered again Nu Boötis, which if my memory serves me well has a separation of more than 600". Nu 1 shows orange, and Nu 2 shows blue, but I feel that the separation (and the light pollution) is almost too much for my telescope to do justice to this pairing. This couple in binoculars seems much better.

Finally I gave a quick look at M13, but the general conditions didn't allow for a view as spectacular as I'd want it to be

[wookie1965]

Well forecast has changed its clear between 7pm and 9pm so looks like the session is not on and does not look good for the next week coming😢

[Mr Spock]

As usual high cloud is obscuring everything. I've forgotten what blue sky looks like.

[John]

We actually had a decent night for a Bristol AS outreach event for a change !!!!

Some cloud dodging needed but 25 visitors were treated to some fine views through a range of scopes from 4 to 12 inches in aperture.

The highlights (judging by the "wows") seemed to be Saturn (of course) and Jupiter with Io and it's shadow in transit.

Lovely to get out with a bunch of enthusiastic people and observe again. Even better to share the views with newcomers, young and older, to the hobby 😁

 

Edited October 7, 2023 by John

[RobertI]

Another outreach night, this time in the graveyard of Polstead church in Suffolk following an excellent talk by a fellow astronomer on galaxies and the perils of light pollution. The clouds spoiled the show unfortunately - there were a couple of nice rigs set up to show real time images of some galaxies but sadly nothing to see - however my visual only setup, comprising a C8 on the Skytee, managed to spy Jupiter and Saturn between the clouds, Saturn especially eliciting “Wows” from everyone who saw it through the eyepiece, reminding me of what a truly magical sight it is.  

[John]

40 minutes ago, RobertI said:

Another outreach night, this time in the graveyard of Polstead church in Suffolk following an excellent talk by a fellow astronomer on galaxies and the perils of light pollution. The clouds spoiled the show unfortunately - there were a couple of nice rigs set up to show real time images of some galaxies but sadly nothing to see - however my visual only setup, comprising a C8 on the Skytee, managed to spy Jupiter and Saturn between the clouds, Saturn especially eliciting “Wows” from everyone who saw it through the eyepiece, reminding me of what a truly magical sight it is.  

It wasn't a "galaxy night" here either. The brighter planetary nebulae plus the globular cluster M13 were the best DSO's that we could offer 🙄

[Nigella Bryant]

Managed to get a glimpse of Saturn this evening, but mostly concentrated on Jupiter. Nice clear night 🌙 yay, lol. 

[bosun21]

I haven't had a glimpse of a clear sky for over a month now and it's beginning to gnaw at me. Still waiting for first light on a new SW150 Maksutov/ADC combo. Depressing stuff indeed.

[John]

Clear-ish again here tonight. Saturn showing crisply at 257x with the ED120. Just trying to tease out Tethys which is rather close to the ring system this evening.

I'll have a look at Neptune later, if it stays clear. I would like to see a glimpse of Triton with the ED120 which I've not managed so far.

 

Edited October 8, 2023 by John

[globular]

Where is the jealous emoji? 

 

Good luck with Triton 

[Ags]

Watched Io emerge from behind Jupiter.

[bosun21]

I forgot, what's a clear sky again?

[Nigella Bryant]

Another Jupiter session this evening, quite a dark bluish disturbance in North equatorial zone and equatorial band. Quite distinctive. Also three interesting vortexes around the red spot. 

[John]

14 hours ago, John said:

Clear-ish again here tonight. Saturn showing crisply at 257x with the ED120. Just trying to tease out Tethys which is rather close to the ring system this evening.

I'll have a look at Neptune later, if it stays clear. I would like to see a glimpse of Triton with the ED120 which I've not managed so far.

 

Didn't get Triton. By the time I had finished with Saturn I could see that the sky was loosing transparency. I found Neptune but by then nothing fainter than around magnitude 12 could be seen with the ED120. Another half an hour later and only the brighter constellation stars were visible to the naked eye 🙄

Next time maybe 🙂

[johnturley]

52 minutes ago, John said:

Didn't get Triton. By the time I had finished with Saturn I could see that the sky was loosing transparency. I found Neptune but by then nothing fainter than around magnitude 12 could be seen with the ED120. Another half an hour later and only the brighter constellation stars were visible to the naked eye 🙄

Next time maybe 🙂

I've never been able to view Triton visually even through my 14in Newtonian (although have picked it up in a photo), I put this down to a combination of light pollution (Bortle 5 in my location), and my deteriorating eyesight.

John  

[John]

3 hours ago, johnturley said:

I've never been able to view Triton visually even through my 14in Newtonian (although have picked it up in a photo), I put this down to a combination of light pollution (Bortle 5 in my location), and my deteriorating eyesight.

John  

Sorry that you have not been able to spot Triton as yet John.

My skies are Bortle 5-ish. I have seen it quite often with my 12 inch dob and a few times with my 130mm refractor. I'd like to do it with the ED120 though, for the challenge mostly 🙄

My 12 inch dob showed me Uranus's moons Oberon and Titania which are a touch fainter than Triton. I could not spot Phobos or Deimos at the last martian opposition though. Those little worlds do move around the red planet fast through - windows of good elongation are rather short in duration !

[johnturley]

11 minutes ago, John said:

Sorry that you have not been able to spot Triton as yet John.

My skies are Bortle 5-ish. I have seen it quite often with my 12 inch dob and a few times with my 130mm refractor. I'd like to do it with the ED120 though, for the challenge mostly 🙄

My 12 inch dob showed me Uranus's moons Oberon and Titania which are a touch fainter than Triton. I could not spot Phobos or Deimos at the last martian opposition though. Those little worlds do move around the red planet fast through - windows of good elongation are rather short in duration !

I've not been able to spot any of the moons of Uranus either, I understand that they are harder to spot than Neptune's Triton.

John 

[John]

Sort of the opposite to last night tonight. It started poorly with just a few bright stars showing so I put my 8 inch dob out really just to check it's collimation.

Gradually the transparency of the sky has improved so now I can pick of some of the brighter DSO's and I'm eagerly waiting for Saturn to get clear of the rooftops.

I have not owned one of these (Skywatcher) 8 inch F/6 dobs for many years but I'm impressed with the optics in this barely used example I must say.

With proper cooling the star images at high power show a nice airy disk and a couple of diffraction rings around the brighter ones. A bit more "clutter" than a refractor view but really pretty good. I think I have the collimation sorted 🙂

I split Pi Aquilae really easily at 150x and then just kept pushing the magnification up and up maxing out at a silly 600x (2mm stop on the Nagler zoom) with clear star images and quite a "gap" between them given the 1.425 arc second separation. Cracking stuff from the mass produced optics 🙂

If this keeps up I might have a chance of catching Triton making up for last nights effort.

3rd night of observing in a row - amazing !!! 😁

Edited October 9, 2023 by John

[josefk]

Managed an unexpected hour on Saturn last night.

Seeing and transparency both very poor. By mid session (20:30 BST) very few stars visible naked eye in fact due to a high hazy cloud that seemed to be thickening. Nevertheless a pleasure to be out after a long cloudy break.

Saturn was showing a mild amount of blue, blue/grey, lemon and yellow shading at the start of the session very nicely but transparency/clarity definitely dropped as time went on. No sign of the Cassini Division and this was my main target - i really want to nail it in my small 3" scope. I was struggling to NOT imagine the CD flickering every so often but i'm positive this was imagination only on this evening. 

Swinging to Jupiter at ~21:00 and the GRS should have been on show at the western end of the SEB but transparency had really deteriorated so only smudgy NEB/SEB to see though SEB looked a bit truncated in the west (short of the limb). Jupiter was glowing in the haze when viewed naked eye.

Still. 1st time out in the dark since the beginning of September i think!