Sunday morning tour around

[Davesellars]

Session Date: March 27th
Session Start Time: 01:00am
Scope: 120ST

I'd not had a session since the night of Tuesday/Wednesday and was starting to get withdrawal symptoms...  Unfortunately the previous nights while clear have only yielded extremely poor transparency here not fit for anything.  The transparency improved though during the evening from a 2/5 to a 4/5 and by midnight with neighbour lights off it was nice and dark outside.  I was also keen to get out as the forecast for the coming week (true to form for no Moon) is absolutely horrendous!

M13 - I started on this as it was nice and high up and was keen to compare a bit against the recent observation with the 12" dob.  Using the 25mm Plossl this is wonderously bright and large but with no feature to the cluster. Coming down to the Baader BCO 10mm this resolved the outer sections.  Using the 4mm TMB clone, while the view was quite dim, prolonged observation of the cluster resolved many areas in core while losing the outer sections - it was a constantly moving with stars popping in and out of observation especially with averted vision helping to resolve the internal structure.  Persistance is required to get the best out of the object at this aperture while the 12" dob, naturally with considerable more power gives you these details on a plate.  With 120mm aperture you have to really work at it - but a good percentage of that detail is actually there.

Leo Triplet - This area of the sky I noted was starting to dip into a lower haze so observation was certainly not optimal.  While M65 and M66 were visible they were quite faint but showing a very slight extra to the core.  NGC 3628, unsurprisingly was not visible as the transparency here obviously was not good enough.

I moved up to Coma Berenices where it was sufficiently high enough to be outside of this haze.

Mel 111 - This massive open star cluster it quite something!  Actually it was observed at its best with the 6x30 finder which gets the entire 4.5 degree size of the cluster in view in its surrounding context.  Definitely a wide vision / binocular object.  It has a good variety of star magnitudes but mostly bright.  Around this area there are quite a few galaxies of interst to be observed...

NGC 4565 Needle Galaxy - Very diffuse with the 120mm aperture however its central bulge is obvious and considerable extension / length to the galaxy seen particularly with averted vision.  I was unfortunately not able to see the central dark lane on this occasion.

NGC 4464 (Elliptical Galaxy) - This is small but very bright with no feature apart from its core.

NGC 4725 (Barred Spiral Galaxy) - This was faint - in the eyepiece with the 10mm BCO it is obviously reasonable size with its core obvious direct vision however there is some faint appearance of surrounding structure with averted vision.  This is definitely one to return back to with the 12" dob.

NGC 4559 (Spiral Galaxy) - Very diffuse large angular ellipse observed with the 10mm BCO.  With averted vision very faint areas of variance in brightness could be seen however this definitely requires more aperture.  Writing this now and investigating the structure of this - this galaxy contains a number of nebulous regions however their magnitude at 15 may be out of reach...  The galaxy itself looks to have considerable structure though so defintitely will revist this with the 12" dob.

Moving into Ursa Major I looked up M81/M82 - both outstanding bright compared to the previous galaxies... with the 10mm BCO, the structure of M82 was very obvious with its dark bar.  Even M81 seemed to show some brightening outside of its core area but very undefined.

For the last I moved to Lyra to take a look at an old friend that I have not viewed for many years...  M57, the Ring nebula.  Very bright starting with the 25mm Plossl and moving down to 10mm BCO there is a mere hint of a doughnut.  Only with the 4mm at 150x that this fully resolves and gives a slightly stretched ring of decent size.  Before I finished I pointed at the Double Double with the 4mm in place.  I was not expecting it but with extremely precise (not easy with this focuser!) focus, I was able to split both (just).  The seeing seemed to be very good which probably helped but I wasn't expecting to split them with this scope.

So it was close to 4am (daylight savings had kicked in...).  Clouds were just starting to move in, however I stood back a while and viewed for 5 minutes the sky.  Cygnus rising up almost clearing some nearby houses - I'll be looking forward very much to viewing the Veil again soon!

Edited March 27, 2022 by Davesellars

[wookie1965]

Great getting the Leo trio I have never caught them from home, you must have dark skies. 

[Davesellars]

12 hours ago, wookie1965 said:

Great getting the Leo trio I have never caught them from home, you must have dark skies. 

It's not bad considering it's a reasonable size town however I live more on the edge of it.  As long as it's transparent enough I can see down to mag 5 NELM after a few minutes dark adaption taking Ursa Minor as an indication.  I have managed to get a bit better but it has to be exceptional and definitely after midnight once surrounding houses have their lights off.  On a good transparent night I can see the Milky Way stretching across with some structure although faint.

[wookie1965]

That's it from here I Can only see Polaris I cannot see any of the other stars in Ursa Minor.