Double stars, planets & more 18th September

[Knighty2112]

Been a while since I did any double star observations, so even though last nights forcast wasn’t looking to promising when I nosed outside at 9pm’ish most of the sky was clear so decided to put my Heq5 Pro goto mount out and set up. Even though I was only doing visual work I still levelled up the mount and polar aligned, then using wifi I did a 3 star alignment with Synscan Pro app, then switched control of the mount to Skysafri Pro 6 which makes it a breeze to get targets with. Earlier on I had been planning (with the help of Agnes Calrke’s Discovering Double Stars) to select some suitably placed constellation to start off with, and as Hercules is pretty handy from my back garden I chose the list from Agnes’ book to go with first. Scope used my Celestron 120mm f8.3 ‘frac, with mostly my Baader Zoom Ep fitted with the 2.25x barlow, which was set to 10.6mm mostly;

100 Her

56 Her - not seen. Secondary too faint.

95 Her

Alpha Her

Delta Her

Gamma Her

Kappa Her

Mu Her

Rho Her

Struve (STF) 2063

Struve (STF) 2411

 

After going through these doubles to the end of the list until approx 10:25pm, I then decided to go for the following targets also as the sky was doing pretty well with just the odd fleeting patch of cloud coming over;

Albeirio - who doesn’t like looking at this great double!

M27 - Dumbbell nebula

CR399 - Coathanger open cluster (used 32mm Omni EP)

M71 - faint globular but seen best with averted vision.

NGC 6828 Blinking planetary nebula

Saturn - seeing was pretty steady so got great views

Neptune - easy to spot with pale green colour in sparse starfield.

Jupiter - Nice details showing in the banding. Good seeing.

NGC 7662 - Blue snowball nebula.

NGC 6543 - Cats eye nebula.

M92 - globular in Hercules

M13 - the one and only in Hercules.

M57 - ring nebula

Epsilon Lyra - double double. Easily split with both pairs. Seeing nice and steady.

Nu1 Dra (Kuma) - double in Draco. Nice easy matched double.

HD 208063 - double in Cephus. Wide double.

Vesta - 6th mag asteroid easily seen in same fov with much fainter stars.

Juno - 1st observation of this asteroid for me. Again easily seen as 8th magnitude object in very sparse star field. 
 

After this at 11:45pm I was getting tired, and with clouds starting to pile in I decided to call it quits for the night, but very happy with the just over  2 hour session. Love using Skysafari with the goto mount. Way better than using the old handset, and much more accurate too after doing the 3 star align with the Synscan Pro app on my Ipad, then giving control to Skysafari. All objects fell easily into view with the 10.3mm Baader zoom EP. Highlights of the night seeing Vesta again, and Juno for the 1st time.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 19, 2022 by Knighty2112

[Stu]

Great session @Knighty2112, thanks for the report 👍

[wookie1965]

Great selection of doubles there and other objects especially NGC7662 one of my all time favourites.