Something a bit different tonight

[RobertI]

I thought I would have a quick session tonight using my SkyProdigy and Heritage 130P combo. This was partly to test whether my ancient 7ah Celestron Powertank still had enough oomph to power the mount. Switching on, the SkyProdigy did its auto align perfectly first time, despite a bright moon and I was ready to observe. With a 17.5mm Morpheus giving 37x, and a 2.25 Barlow giving 83x, I had a nice tour of some DSOs including the globular M15, the Wild Duck cluster M11 in Scutum showing a lovely rich fan shape of stars, NGC7009 the Saturn Nebula in Aquarius showing up as a small non-stellar greenish disc and a nice compact open cluster NGC663 in Cassiopeia. Finished off with Albireo.

The mount behaved perfectly for the hour or so I was out there, and the gotos got objects into the FOV at 37x, so it looks like the battery works well with the mount. I’m still chuffed with this little setup - I cant think of a portable goto setup that is quicker to get up and running! 

During the session I had a strange visitor in the form of a very bright cloud overhead. It moved very slowly northward over the course of 30 minutes. For a while I wondered if I was seeing an aurora as it had that kind of rippled curtain look, then I thought noctilucent cloud, but I’d expect to see both of these further to the northern horizon. I think it was just a high cloud, perhaps catching the moonlight?

 

[Franklin]

High cloud catching some moonlight?

[RobertI]

1 hour ago, Franklin said:

High cloud catching some moonlight?

Yes that was my conclusion too.