Fantastic night 17/09/2022

[sorrimen]

What a night tonight was! Not the steadiest seeing or notably incredible transparency, but I was lucky to be joined by @PeterW. Needless to say, in the 3 hours we were out there he showed and taught me a whole lot (much more than I thought possible). 

Got set up at ~9:00pm with the 8” dob. Thanks to Peter, solved a recent collimation issue I’d had so we were up and running whilst the scope was still cooling off. First stop was Jupiter, which wasn’t bad but there wasn’t much to be seen. Headed quickly over to saturn, which took higher mags much better. 150x, division was just visible in outer parts of the rings. Pushing up to 200x and 240x, division was much more visible and Peter pointed out the shadow of the planet on the rings, which was much easier to see than I’ve noticed before. 

I started off the DSO viewing with the ring, as it’s one of my few stellarium-free objects which I can find nice and quickly. Tested out my new ultrablock, which at 100x helped contrast a little and the ring structure was of course easily visible. 

This is where the fun began, with Peter leading me on a marathon with tonnes of firsts. In a rough order, we hit M15, M2, M11, M25 (possibly 24?), Coathanger, M27, Double cluster, Albireo, M31+2 and various others along the way. 

M2 and M15 were similar, with more resolvable stars to me in M2. M15 was more of a ‘diffuse’ glob than the M13 I’m used to, which I very much enjoyed. M11 was a very fun target to explore. Going up in mag to 100x and 150x resolved more stars, with one very notable faint star that would pop in and out with averted. M25 and the coathanger were treats, with their own interestingly shaped offerings. M27 was the poorest showing that I’ve seen of it, likely due to some high clouds rolling in. With the ultrablock and 75x, it improved significantly and became much more of the usual object I’m used to seeing. Gave M71 a go, but I’ve only ever got it on extremely transparent nights from our poor bortle 7. No luck there. Speaking of no luck, we also went over to the veil to see if anything could be seen with the ultrablock. No surprise that there was nothing there!

Embarrassed to admit it, but I hadn’t seen the double cluster or albireo before. Albireo was exactly what I’d expected to be, but much less tight of a double than I’d imagined. The colour difference between the two stars is just fantastic. The double cluster was brilliant. Was surprised to fit both in one 24mm eyepiece and will certainly be revisiting this often. Plenty of stars to see, especially in h Persei. Can’t imagine what this would be like from darker skies! 

Swept over to M31 briefly as clouds were rolling in. M32 pretty easy as per, but no detail in either as expected from the LP and transparency situation. 

Glancing at stellarium, I noticed the GRS had come around so we swept back over. Wasted a bit of observing time to try out my new ADC, which thankfully reached focus without issue. Seeing had steadied out a little, but 150x remained the best mag. Great amount of detail to be seen, notably the swirling around the GRS and the north and south polar regions.

Finished up with Pleiades and the moon. Moon benefited greatly from the Baader zoom provided by Peter. Some great detail, with plenty of central peaks visible within craters.

 

All in all, a fantastic time and a great pleasure to share the night with Peter. Tonight has really opened my eyes up to what else is around!

[PeterW]

Happy to help. Very nice views when we got it collimated.

I’ll have to “make a list” for next time and bring a filter or two.

We used pretty much every second we could, complete cloud out at the end, not even the moon escaped.

 

Peter 

[Captain Scarlet]

Very nice! Where was this, West End Green?

Magnus

[Kon]

Great report and nice targets!

[PeterW]

No, just “round the corner” from both of us. It seems we live within a short scope-dragging distance each other. So skies around mag19 (probably worse as the LEDs may be skewing things to look darker).

 

Peter