Observing report 07 11

[lunator]

Observing report 07/11/2023

Telescope 200mm F6 Seeing II/V Transparency II/V

I managed to get a couple of hours observing. Despite an early start the next morning I could still get some observing time.

Mr Dobbie had been out on a tarpaulin cooling down. I checked the collimation and it all looked good.

My first target was Saturn. It is still quite low but once I had clipped the vegetation I had a fairly good view. Titan was easily visible with Rhea visible occasionally. The Cassini division was also fairly clear.

The first new target I had was STF2567 in Aquila. A wide pair of stars with a noticeable difference in magnitude. Easily split at x50. The primary is yellow, the secondary is orange. The best view was at x100.

My next target was STF2563AB,C in Sagitta, a fairly close pair with a wide ‘C’ component. All components looked white. The primary is bright and the secondary and tertiary are of similar magnitude. Part of a kite shape asterism. Easily split at x50, the best view was at x75.

I moved onto STF2569 in Sagitta. A close pair of white stars with a moderate difference in magnitude. Part of a right angled triangle.

My final new double was STF2570 in Aquila. A close pair with a moderate difference in magnitude. The primary is white, the secondary is pale blue. Shares the field with a Sagitta shaped asterism.

Whilst I was in Aquila I thought I would check on my double CSR3. So I dropped down to STF2636 which shares a low powered field with CSR3.I am still amazed Struve observed STF2636 but ignore a wider but brighter pair.

Jupiter had cleared the trees and using the baader zoom I had a look at x50-x150. The detail on the belts was very good. I decided to get the 6mm ortho out giving me x200. This really brightened the image. I am assuming this is due to fewer elements in this eyepiece. The extra magnification helped to draw out detail in the belts and I could see Ganymede as a disk not just a dot.

After some time I decided that as the transparency was good I would have a look at Andromeda and it’s satellite galaxies. M31 & M32 are easy to spot but M110 needs very transparent skies to observe. When I looked at the galaxies in the 24mm giving me ~1.4°. I was very pleased that I could see a grey smudge exactly where I was expecting M110 to be.

I did have a quick look for M33 but I didn’t really see anything obvious.

I did get visited by 2 hedgehogs one walked right past the telescope 😄

 

 

[Zermelo]

Nice report, thanks for posting.

I've added a couple of those doubles to my next list. For anyone using SkySafari, note that it doesn't list STF 2570 under that designation, but it can be found as SAO 105207.