What did you see tonight?

[Froeng]

Just finished. It is funny how dim Saturn is compared to Jupiter. Too low down in the wobbly atmosphere to be truly impressive.

Finished off with another 20min on the King and now the seeing was terrific!

Lots of belt details coming through.

scope was dripping wet at 22.45, so called it a night.

[John]

Grabbed a quick look with the Tak 100 when a clear patch of sky appeared. I doubt it will last so I made the most of the moon and Jupiter.

Aristarchus and the Vallis Schroterii looked superb. Jupiter very nice and a quick look at Theta Aurigae was rewarding.

Scope is still out but the gap has closed. I'm hoping that it will open up again 🤞

[Mr Spock]

CO says 100% cloud, but, I'm looking at the moon! Apart from a little high cloud it looks clear to me!

Aristarchus is really well illuminated. Lots of detail at x185 in the 4".

[John]

Too much thin cloud now but nice little session  while it lasted. Thank goodness for 4 inch "grab and go's" 🙂

[Mr Spock]

Plato looks good too. I'm picking up A, B, C and D quite easily. I'll look for the others in a bit when I've warmed up - it's 4° out there!

Fascinating comparison of eyepieces on Aristarchus. 4mm TOE, 4mm Nirvana and 8mm LVW with Meade 140 Apo Barlow (nosepiece in a Svbony extension tube to give x2). 
They all show a similar amount of detail. Someone else has a bad 4mm Nirvana but mine isn't - it's equal to the TOE. The preferred view is through the LVW; it is a tiny bit darker than the other two but somehow the view is more pleasing. Not something I can put into words. It does need a clean though as I can see quite a bit of dust 
All three are sharp to the edge too. With the Nirvana I can glance across and see the craterlets in Plato.

[PeterStudz]

Have an old university friend (that’s a long time ago!) over from the States. For him it’s the first time looking through a telescope. Just had a good session between beers observing the moon, saturn and jupiter with the 200p. Clouds coming and going but seeing surprisingly good. Could make out the Cassini division at the ring tips of saturn and make out three moons. Good detail on jupiter’s bands. A lot of dew here tonight. 

Interesting, but you can soon tell when someone is more into astronomy than others especially when they say things like “I could look at this for ages”. Total cloud cover now here in Southampton and it’s actually started drizzling - so back inside. Think that’s it for the night!

Edited October 26, 2023 by PeterStudz

[Mr Spock]

Just had a good session on Jupiter, but it's now clouded over. Excellent seeing and an extraordinary amount of detail in the 4". A fascinating white spot on view and the moons definite discs.

More interesting eyepiece comparisons (well, why not!). This time 3.3mm TOE (x224), 8mm LVW + x2.5 Powermate (x231) and not quite equal, 7mm Circle-T ortho and x2 Barlow (x211). All very similar amounts of detail but again the preferred view is with the LVW.
Earlier on Aristarchus I compared the 2.5mm TOE (x296) and 5mm LVW + Barlow (x295) with a similar result. Both sharp but again a more 'pleasing' view with the LVW. It's a more relaxed view like I'm not straining to see the detail.

With the x4 Powermate arriving soon alongside the x2.5 and x2 Barlow I could be satisfied with just the LVWs and dump all the rest 

[Nik271]

Managed to see Rima Sharp for only the second time. The seeing cooperated briefly at about 10pm and in short periods I could even resolve the bends in the northern parts. With Skymax 180 at x220. Aristarchus region also looked superb. Mons Rumker was like giant semi-melted marshmallow on the terminator.

Edited October 27, 2023 by Nik271

[John]

Lots of cloud cover here tonight. It's just thin enough to make observing Jupiter worthwhile though. I've been enjoying watching the GRS come onto the disk and now that has been followed by Europa's shadow and shortly will be followed by Europa itself. 

A background star posing as a fainter, 5th jovian moon adds to the overall scene 🙂

[IB20]

Just finished a fabulous night viewing Jupiter, Saturn and a nearly full moon. Finished on a wonderful GRS and Europa shadow transit. 👍🏻

[Paz]

I got out last night for an hour on Jupiter and the moon. I'm back to using my eq5 which is more hassle to set up but it's so much better having tracking.

I had the SM125 out with binoviewers and SLVs at 127x and then 254x. I didn't have a plan for the moon so just wandered around the limb. The views were good but I'm having much more enjoyable lunar sessions these days when I have a plan and targets I'm seeking out that I have researched.

Jupiter was very good, 34 degrees up and the seeing was ok. I could see good details in the equatorial belts and towards the poles, especially to the North.

I put a ND0.9 filter in for the moon at first as it was so bright, and in the end the filter stayed in the whole session, it just made everything more relaxing and I think it may have actually helped with tuning in to the details on Jupiter but I didn’t do any back and forth comparisons. I wonder why this filter seemed so useful this time.

I was out the front and managed to frighten my neighbour who parked up and didn't see me until they got out of their car right next to me in the dark!

Having tried it in colder weather this SM125 does cool down quickly, which is good, but it also warms up again quickly when I bring it back indoors and so dews up as a result. I need to put a towel around it or something when I bring it in so it warms up more slowly and doesn't dew up (I'm obsessed about avoiding dew on my optics if I can at all avoid it!).

[Saganite]

Out from 8pm the seeing was fair.  A good hour or so on Saturn with the APM revealing several bands on the planet with excellent colour, a good Cassini, and four moons, Titan, Dione, Tethys, and Rhea. Excellent seeing washed through at intervals when everything became dead sharp, at 171x, but most of the time I was at 140x to 150x.  A decent star test on Vega and a quick look at the Double double, followed by  Albireo.

An extremely bright meteor , slashed across the sky on a line from Vega through Sagitta and down to the South around 9pm.  It was still incredibly bright and large as it went behind the bungalow roof which blocks most of my Southern horizon. The high light of the evening perhaps...

At about 9.30 I switched to Jupiter, now high enough to reveal , at 140x ,a disc with four good bands and plenty of texture.  I was not able to see the GRS or the transit this time as it clouded over soon after, which was a shame. I did have a last quick look at my favourite object , Lunar.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Saganite

[PeterC65]

I managed an EAA session between the banks of cloud last night. Given that the Moon was so bright and Jupiter was on display, I used the Skymax 127 for EAA for the first time. I also had the FMA135 riding piggyback which gave a very handy widefield view of the same area of sky.

The Moon looked great. With the IR pass filter and auto colour balance selected the atmospheric wobble was considerably reduced and it remained a sensible colour. With EAA I can be observing the Moon on the main screen while having the Virtual Moon Atlas open on another, allowing me to look up the features I’m seeing.

Jupiter was fuzzy, don’t know why, but I could still see a little more detail of the bands than I can visually, with just live video. Unfortunately the GRS wasn’t on display, but I could make out a dark region on the edge of the northern cloud belt. This time the IR pass filter turned the planet red, even with auto colour balance selected, although once again it did also reduce atmospheric wobble. Even after subsequent post processing (stacking captured frames) the planet still looked fuzzy.

By this time the clouds were rolling in so I slewed to NGC1961 which was still in a clear part of the sky and managed a few minutes before that too was obscured. I could just make out the galaxy, but the slow Skymax really isn’t the right scope for anything faint. It did a good job on the Moon though.

This was also the first outing for the new set of Optolong filters which do all seem to be parfocal, although I didn’t have a chance to properly check the L-eNhance.

The image below is a single frame of 6.6ms with the IR pass filter. Stacked frames look sharper but I prefer to observe on the night.

[Mr Spock]

Just had an afternoon of solar. It's getting a bit close to the houses opposite now so session is over. 

Views through the 120mm achro + Baader Continuum were very crisp and clear; again more so than the 100mm apo. Seeing conditions were variable, as was the cloud, but I had some really good views.

I did confirm the the 7mm Nirvana has the same magnification as the 8mm LVW. Ernest measured the Meade badged version at 8mm. Very strange. The LVW gave the better view anyway. The seeing was able to support the 5mm LVW for a while (x200).

One thing I do like about the 120mm is the Astro Essentials focuser I fitted. It's so smooth and easy. Contrast that to the dire, sticky, lumpy, nasty Tak focuser which has to be the worst (and most expensive) focuser I've used 😡 If only I could fit the AE...

 

[Ags]

What did I see tonight?

1. The high speed USB cable that went missing during the home renovations.

2. the back half of my Askar FMA 135, ditto.

Went out for a peek at Jupiter... I didn't expect much as Jupiter was twinkling, suggesting poor seeing. I wasn't wrong.

[Stu]

Too windy and too tired for anything serious, so just had a quick look at the Moon and Jupiter with the 15x50IS binos.

Even at 98.5% illumination, the terminator was very clearly visible, with the crater Gauss very prominent.

Jupiter’s four moons were clearly visible, quite impressive give that Europa and Io were close by; both around 1 degree from the planet but sharply defined.

[Chandra]

It seems that no one paid much attention to the slight partial eclipse of the Moon that occurred on Saturday night... The shadow of the Earth "ate" a portion of the S-SW of our satellite... The best thing about the phenomenon is that it did not happened at odd hours...
Already in the early morning, the apparent approach between the Moon and Jupiter produced a beautiful conjunction that must have gone as unnoticed or more by most mortals than the eclipse a few hours before, except for night owl photographers like my brother-in-law from Paris (I share a photo he sent me)... So, what happened this Saturday was a kind of Saturday night astronomical fever 🕺💃

[Stu1smartcookie]

1 minute ago, Chandra said:

It seems that no one paid much attention to the slight partial eclipse of the Moon that occurred on Saturday night... The shadow of the Earth "ate" a portion of the S-SW of our satellite... The best thing about the phenomenon is that it did not happened at odd hours...
Already in the early morning, the apparent approach between the Moon and Jupiter produced a beautiful conjunction that must have gone as unnoticed or more by most mortals than the eclipse a few hours before, except for night owl photographers like my brother-in-law from Paris (I share a photo he sent me)... So, what happened this Saturday was a kind of Saturday night astronomical fever 🕺💃

Wonderful setting ... unfortunately in the UK most of us were blighted by cloud . 

[John]

2 hours ago, Chandra said:

It seems that no one paid much attention to the slight partial eclipse of the Moon that occurred on Saturday night... 

 

While cloud cover did make it difficult for many in the UK, there was some observing / imaging done of the event and this thread records that:

 

 

Edited October 30, 2023 by John

[jjohnson3803]

I was able to get about 45 minutes of observing in with my 72ED refractor before dawn today:

Split two doubles - Nu1 CMa  and HD 49024 in M41.

Also had a look at open cluster Cr140 - very sparse and wide.  Counted about 8 stars before cloud bands rolled in and ended my session.

 

[Chandra]

3 hours ago, John said:

Si bien la cobertura de nubes dificultó las cosas para muchos en el Reino Unido, se realizaron algunas observaciones/imágenes del evento y este hilo registra que:

 

 

I've been checking the thread. Despite the difficulties, some excellent images were obtained. From my location it could be viewed without problems. Thanks for sharing the link!

[Nik271]

I'm going to watch the shadow transit of Io tonight. Shadow contact is at 20:30 shortly followed by Io itself moving across Jupiter very close to its shadow. I've set up my Skymax 127 and fingers crossed the weather is cooperating so far🤞

Edited October 30, 2023 by Nik271

[Nik271]

According to Stellarium at 22:25 both Io and its shadow will be passing over the GRS. I hope the clouds stay away until then!

[John]

5 minutes ago, Nik271 said:

According to Stellarium at 22:25 both Io and its shadow will be passing over the GRS. I hope the clouds stay away until then!

I was hoping for the same but such hopes are fading now. Earlier I got some nice views of Saturn despite thin cloud. Now nothing at all is showing through 😒

Edited October 30, 2023 by John

[globular]

Rain here 😢
But I enjoyed the animation of it in SkySafari 😉