Moonlit Clusters

[SuburbanMak]

After a busy week & the unsettling background of news I was itching to get out tonight for some peace under the stars despite the full moon. 

I opted for the ST80 & lazy GoTo choices as the moon was pretty much bleaching out anything less than Mag3 naked eye.  Lovely night though and the full moon cast a hard shadow as I trudged out to my regular spot on the 22 of the river park rugby pitch.

After aligning on Vega & Arcturus the AZGTi performed superbly, the widefield helps & this small scope is rock solid on the Berlebach 312 Report. Really pleased with this combination (maybe just need to upgrade the optics a bit…)

Transparency was quite good & seeing perfectly fine for the low power session I had in mind. I defaulted to the Baader Hyperion 24mm 68 degree, switching in and out with the 32mm Hyperion Aspheric & Mk IV 8-24mm zoom based on the size of object. 

Started with the Double Cluster, NGC 869/884,  stunning even under full moonlight and seen in its rich context with this widefield setup. 

Moved the short hop to Stock 23 (Pazmino’s Cluster) in Camelopardalis which I’d never looked at before. Nice bright open cluster with a prominent orange/yellow brightest member and a mini keystone to the W.  Will definitely add this to my regulars list. 

NGC 457 -  picked up the “eyes” of the Owl/Dragonfly  in widefield and switched up to 50x with the zoom to reveal the jewelled “body & wings”. I came down on the side of Dragonfly tonight. One of my favourite objects, really beautiful. 

NGC 1502/Kemble’s Cascade.  A super field, the fainter line of the cascade above a brighter 4 star arc flowing into a pretty open cluster. 

M44 - the Beehive stunning despite its closeness to the moon glow. The perfect object in this widefield set up. Went back & forth but the most satisfying view with the 24mm Hyperion fixed at c17x.  

Switching East of the moon I got some nice contextual views of globulars  M5, M13 & M92 against their background fields. Love the sense of scale & distance viewing globs this way. 

On a whim I had a shot at M57, The Ring nebula as Lyra was rising out of the low murk. Delighted to spot a tiny smudge in the 24mm & faint but unmistakably the Ring Nebula confirmed at tonight’s max power of 50x with the Baader Zoom.  Not bad for an ST80 with a full moon! 
Revisited  Stock 23 and Kembles Cascade before finishing on a magic 6 degree view of the Alpha Persei cluster setting into gently swaying trees. 

Packed up & walked home basking in the moonlight to be greeted enthusiastically by my dog in an otherwise sleeping house. Have treated myself to a wee dram as I write - all in all a perfect antidote to this week. 

 

Edited March 19, 2022 by SuburbanMak

[glafnazur]

Nice report, sounds like my kind of night, I just love looking at clusters. Thanks for mentioning Stock 23 (Pazmino’s Cluster), it is a new object for me so I'll check that out sometime. NGC 457 is one of my favourite clusters too 🙂