Observing in civil twilight 02.07.23

[Ratlet]

First clear night in an age.  The missus wanted me out so she could sort her knitting bag.  I hadn't got high hopes as we are a few weeks from nautical twilight.  Decided to try for the double double with the 10" dob.

Calibrated the setting circles on Vega and did the wee jaunt over to the double double.  The 17.5mm Morpheus gave an incomplete spilt, the pairs being a bit mushed together, but dropping in the 12mm bst gave me the split comfortably.  Quite happy with that as I'm not sure I've actually managed the split before.

I'm a great believer in checking out albireo at every opportunity but managed to miss on my first attempt but landed on a red star which I think was hd181601.  I love finding red stars.  I find they sort of leap out at you.

I hung around on it for a while and swapped eyes as my right eye has astigmatism and I wanted to see the difference.  The star appeared more point like with my left eye or with my right with glasses which was a bit depressing but the difference was slight.  

Decided to try for some globulars in ophiuchus but the sky around the horizon was too bright.  Panned to Hercules but whilst I could make out a fuzzy blob it wasn't really worth it.

Wrapped up the session with the ring nebula and some filter testing.  Unaided was underwhelming and had very minimal contrast.  It was improved slightly with my svbony UHC, but not by a huge amount.  It's quite broadband so not too surprising.  My sv202 dual band imaging filter did a much better job although the image felt a little soft.  It completely nuked the stars so focus was a challenge.  That being said the contrast was miles better and I was able to pick see the wing quite clearly.

Quite a good, short session all in all.  Looking forward to getting some proper dark back as we get into the season!

Attached a quick image of albireo using my phone through the eyepiece.  The orange is quite faithful to what I observed but the blue seems a bit washed out compared to reality.

[saac]

I went to bed last night must have been just coming up on 1 am (school holidays). Went out into the garden, the sky was clear alright not a cloud to be seen, same with the stars, it was still too bright!   

I don't want to wish away the summer but oh for an hour or two of darkness. 

Jim 

[Ratlet]

Mate, tell me about it.  What darkness there is is so late it's a fair punishment staying up for it.

That being said I'm glad I did.  The double double was really nice as I've failed to see it conclusively before.  Seeing the figure 8 initially and knowing I had loads more power to throw at it made me crack a smile.

[SwiMatt]

Great report @Ratlet, you make me wanna go out again in the current not-nights we're having at 58°N (similar latitudes to yours, I assume?)... but similarly we've had bad weather for a while 😭