Finally! After 8-9 weeks. 140mm Frac - 20/21 July 2023

[Captain Scarlet]

It’s been more than two months since I had a session worthy of a report, the last being 15th May, with my perfect-seeing night with my 140mm refractor. There was no shortage of clear nights, but a few factors combined to prevent me from getting out and setting up.

The weather has been ostensibly fine but terrible for observing – so much wind! Much of May saw a continuous and strong North-East to Easterly, the only direction for which around my house I have no protected observing site. The Easterlies were followed by a lull and some very hot weather, but at mid-year I have to wait up too long before it gets dark enough. Take a look at a time zone map – you’ll see that the very West of Ireland is half way into the next-west timezone from most of the rest of the British Isles! Which means sunset and maximum darkness for me occurs 36 minutes later than, say, London, and with daylight saving on top means that “true” midnight for me happens at 0136. I just didn’t manage to stay up during June, sadly, although “loss of Astro dark” notwithstanding, even June 21st gets to mag 21.4 at that time. Then, after the wind lull, came the Westerlies, again very strong for at least a fortnight and preventing meaningful observing.

Finally, last night, though it still only gets dark very late, the wind and the clouds behaved enough to tempt me out in spite of my being tired and wanting an early night. I loaded up the wheel-barrow and set up in the grassy triangle around the south side of my house. I eschewed my 12” newt, normally my staple for a night like this, and took the easier option, the Stellarvue 140.

Using the Nexus DSC controlling my AZ-EQ6 on Berlebach Planet, and giving Second Light to my Baader BBHS mirror diagonal (about which more a little later) I aligned on Polaris and Altair. The night was also First Light for my new-to-me Delos 17.3 and 4.5 eyepieces, and Astronomik 1.25” UHC and Baader 2” Oiii filters.

My list, gleaned from reading SGL’s observing reports, was necessarily a bit random, so I was dancing around the S-SE sky a bit. First was the so-called Struve 485, a prominent double in the OC NGC 1502 which bookmarks one end of Kemble’s Cascade. I had the Delos 17.3. A very nice OC, I have observed the double before but never “noted” it. I took the opportunity to cruise the length of the Cascade too, and possibly for the first time, having observed it many times before, I did notice the variety of colours in its stars.

Exhausted, as you can imagine, at this point by my first proper observation in 2 months, I needed a break, so I quickly measured the sky. It was 23:24 and the sky measured 19.55, still quite bright for here.

I’ve noted @John regularly lately regularly splitting Antares, so this was next. Sadly low down as it was, it was twinkling to my naked eye, and there was no split. To be revisited.

Stephenson 1, the OC surrounding Delta Lyrae was next, and was lovely in the 1.3 degree view given by the Delos 17.3 (54x). Again, myriad star colours were quite evident. I had to refer to Sky Safari repeatedly to check that what I was looking at was what I wanted, and eventually managed to reconcile the patterns.

Comet 2023 Atlas E1 featured in SGL’s reports, but lately not for a while. I decided to give it a go nonetheless, having read it was, at least before, an easy binocular object. I looked it up in SkySafari, and noting its current position a viewfinder’s width south of the star 59 Draconis, found a _barely discernible_ smudge in just the right place. I didn’t have bins with me, but I doubt I’d’ve been able to see it with them. Has anyone seen this Comet recently? Anyway, a “tick”.

By now, midnight, the Milky Way was fairly clear, and my meter showed 21.15.

I turned to an “old friend” on which I think I missed out completely last year, M11, the Wild Duck Cluster. At a wide 54x, it appeared as a startling concentrated bright patch of myriad tiny dots, almost globular-like in its intensity, but not at all a smudge. Trading up to the Delos 10 for 94x, its squareish shape and eponymous V-formations emerged. A real favourite of mine.

My list suggested I move to 61 Cygni. describing it as a wide “red/red” double, but I must admit I didn’t get any redness. I quickly moved on to 52 Cygni, a double not unlike Polaris in relative magnitudes but much tighter. Exquisite. I’d read that this star is the “Veil star”, in that you reach this when hopping to the Veil. So that’s what I did. When I’d had my fill of the double, I widened back out to the Delos 17.3 and fitted my Oiii filter. There was the Veil, plain as day. I replaced the Oiii filter with my UHC filter, after a bit of trouble getting it out of its case – I’d forgotten it was brand new and the seal was still unbroken. I found that patch of Veil (Western IIRC) just as prominent with the UHC, brighter and less green, as you’d expect. I also had a new 2” Baader narrow-band Oiii filter, which I fitted to my Nagler 31 for a 2.7 degree FoV and 30x. I found it less satisfying than with the half-as-much FoV of the previous twice magnification.

In the course of all this I had a problem with the adapter I’d been using as my 2”-to-1.25” step-down. It’s a Glatter Parallizer, which I swear by. But I found that even after supposedly tightening, a 1.25” eyepiece was wobbling around, then jammed while I tried to extract it. Most odd. The parallizer has an angled setting-screw, and when I felt around the inside surface with my finger to feel for anything wrong, there was clearly something loose, which detached and landed onto the mirror face of my BBHS diagonal. Oh no! My first thoughts were that it might be an insect (no), a piece of soil or grit that had somehow got in (no – thank God!). It turned out to be the nylon tip of the Parallizer set-screw, which over the course of its years of use had obviously cracked and fatigued off the grub-tip. I was able to gingerly retrieve it from the face of the diagonal mirror, and carried on.

By now, I was done. It was half past midnight. As a final hurrah before packing up, and because the central part of the Milky Way was prominently on view, I went inside to get my Canon 6D and Samyang 24/1.4 and took a 30-second exposure of my “scope in action at night”.

I measured the sky as I finished and it was 21.5 with the MW nearly directly overhead. I could hear the bats flittering around too.

Not the longest or most memorable session I’ve had but a very welcome return after eight weeks off.

Cheers, Magnus

[Mr Spock]

Excellent report and a good night out. Sounds a lovely scope. 

[Saganite]

My last written up session was 13th June so It was a pleasure to read your report Magnus, excellent.

A fabulous sky BTW !

Edited July 21, 2023 by Saganite

[RobertI]

Lovely report to read. Sounded like a lovely session with some top notch equipment. Thunder, lightning and torrential rain here last night - the garden was grateful though. 🙂

[dweller25]

Great report 👍

[JeremyS]

Super report Magnus 👍🏻

[The60mmKid]

That looks and sounds like a lovely evening 😊

[Stu]

Excellent Magnus, sounds fab 👍

[bosun21]

A great detailed report Magnus and no doubt an enjoyable return to observing for you after a short break.

[JAC51]

👍Great report and very enjoyable to read. I can feel the clouds and the wind, the cloud part of which there have been plenty of here in East England.

My observations have mainly been confined to white light solar for the past month now.

Remaining hopeful for clear skys

[Nicola Fletcher]

Thanks for the great report Magnus - the photo is the stuff of dreams!