4 x 4, a great night of observing

[Bugdozer]

After a sunny morning followed by an intermittently showery afternoon, as evening fell the clouds disappeared completely and the air temperature dropped noticeably. You know you're in for a good night of observing when that happens as it tends to produce really clear seeing.

My daughter and I drove out to our nearby dark site and set up our Celestron 5SE. I wanted to start with something I have never managed to do before - viewing all four outer planets in one session. We began with Saturn, and right away knew we had great seeing. Despite its low altitude, I have never seen it look quite that sharp and clear as far as I can recall. I could see Titan easily enough and wondered if I might be able to get a glimpse of Rhea, on the other side of Saturn to Titan. At first I thought I wasn't going to be able to with the glare from the planet, especially as it's a dim object for a small scope like mine. But with a bit of careful averted vision over a few minutes as I got used to the view I was sure I could make it out, having looked up the position on Stellarium earlier. So that was a first for me. Off to a good start, play it cool!

Next on the planet list was Uranus, which I have observed before, but which daughter had never seen. With my highest power eyepiece giving a magnification around 130x, I could just make out the tiniest little disc. Daughter thought it had a blueish colour to it although I honestly couldn't really determine any colour.

On to Neptune, and I just stuck with a lower power eyepiece as trying to see any detail on such a distant planet with my scope is beyond its resolving power. But it stood out clearly against a black transparent sky. 

We rounded off the planets with Jupiter. Callisto, Europa and Ganymede stretched out on one side, Io on the other. The cloud belts were really clear to see, and the good still air meant that using the Barlow to magnify even more actually helped for once.

Suddenly, there was a bright, greenish flash in the sky to my left - was it a meteor? A green flare coming from Mars? (No, the chances are a million to one, everyone knows that). It turned out to be a drone! Someone nearby was flying it around with a green light on it. It wasn't bright enough to interfere with observing and was making a comical buzzing noise. It carried on flying around for about 20 minutes but did switch its light off so we could only tell where it was by sound.

Next, I wanted to show daughter my newly acquired UHC filter in action, so we centred in on M27, the Dumbbell Nebula. Without the filter, the view was very good - it really was one of the clearest, most transparent dark skies so far this year. With the filter in place, the view went from very good to excellent. The contrast was superb, much more detail could be seen and it really stood out. A short hop away we looked at the Ring Nebula, M57, which I always find makes me feel antsy because it looks SO much like an out of focus star, I always want to fiddle with the focuser and have to remind myself that is what it really is. Again, it was really bright and sharp, but we only had a quick look because I wanted to take the recommendation of one of the other learned forum members and try looking at the Swan Nebula, M17. It was very easy to see. Daughter complained it didn't really look like a swan, although it was easy to make out a well defined shape to it. That got me feeling bold and I decided to try and have another look at its neighbour M16, the Eagle. Regular readers of this forum may have seen my thread whining about how I couldn't previously see it. I am happy to say with the UHC filter on, I could JUST make out a very, very faint cloudiness. Hurrah! As an experiment I then took the filter off and looked again: no nebulosity visible without it.

Now we had been out for a while and our eyes had got really used to the dark, our next target was M33, the well known Triangulum galaxy. For some reason I have never managed to see this object before, I'm not exactly sure why apart from one time I tried and it happened to be directly behind a tree. I think I just forget it's up there. Anyway, it was very visible, although my scope did not show much in the way of structure. I sort of thought I might be able to see a bit but wasn't sure how much was my imagination.

Daughter was keen to see the Andromeda Galaxy, so that was just a short distance away. I have to say I often feel it's not that exciting to observe visually because it's so spread out. But with the great conditions we had tonight, and high overhead, it really looked much better than usual. I wanted to try and show daughter the two companion galaxies M32 and M110, so I lined up carefully to frame the core of M31 on one side and M32 on the other, then let daughter look while I explained to her how to see M32. "Now, on the right you can see the main Andromeda Galaxy..." "No, I can't."

It turned out she'd kicked the tripod when she came over to look, and knocked it out of position. I managed to recentre and she was able to see the little satellite galaxy. Then we panned over to see M110, which is the first time I have seen it as well.

By this time we were starting to get cold, plus having kicked the tripod any other faint objects would require me to realign, so we decided to have one last look at Saturn before packing up. It was still just as clear, and now with my eyes having been in the dark a little longer, Rhea had become easier to see - although still a challenge. Panning the scope to move Saturn itself just outside the FOV worked as a good trick to make Rhea slightly more visible.

Then we packed up and went home to have some hot chocolate. It was easily one of the best nights of observing I have had: four planets, four nebulae and four galaxies, all in really good clear dark skies, and four firsts for me (seeing any of Saturn's moons other than Titan, M16's nebulosity, M33 and M110) and one first for daughter (Uranus).

[John]

What a great report - thanks for sharing your experiences 👍

[Stu]

An excellent read @Bugdozer, I enjoyed that and it sounds like both of you had a great time 👍

[mikeDnight]

It sounds like you both had one of those memorable nights that will stay with you forever. A great read! ☺️

You're probably right when you say you thought you saw structure in M33. Smaller aperture scopes can still pick out variations in surface brightness and some unevenness around the edge of the galaxy. One arm in particular tends to appear subtly brighter than the rest of the surface and it may be that that you saw.

 

[Zermelo]

An excellent writeup, what a great evening.

[John]

Next time you have a look at Messier 33 on a dark night, have a look for a fuzzy spot near a star just outside the visible galactic "halo" of the galaxy. This is NGC 604 an immense star forming region within M33 and, IMHO, the easiest DSO to see that is actually located in another galaxy. I've seen it with 100mm aperture scopes although it's easier with a little more.

Edited October 15, 2023 by John

[Bugdozer]

I forgot to add this was also the first successful use of my homemade dew shield, constructed from 4mm craft foam. I didn't get any condensation on the optics although it's difficult to know if I would have if I hadn't been using the dew shield. It's an SCT so about 95% probability that I would have 😁