Early morning planets

[kerrylewis]

After a lengthy hiatus I decided to dust off the Tak and the Ioptron mount and go for the planets - always my favourite target.

I got up around 3.00 yesterday and today. Yesterday the seeng was exceptionally good  but the mount was playing up. Jupiter looked wonderful as usual and despite the mount troubles i managed to find Saturn too. I had thought that Saturn would not be so attractive to observe as the rings were closing up but how wrong I was. It looked stunning - like a ball with a slim needle piercing it. A pin sharp view showed the almost edge-on rings superbly. A wonderful sight.

I thought that the contacts on the mount controller cable could probably do with a clean - and hey presto the mount is working well again. So I found Mars too. The seeing not as excellent as yesterday but still a nice sharp disc. Couldn't make out any markings or polar cap thought. Finished off with views of Neptune and Uranus (thanks to the goto connected to Sky Safari on my iPad) which showed the usual small coloured discs.

Oh and the moon too!

A really enjoyable session - definitely worth getting up for

[John]

24 minutes ago, kerrylewis said:

After a lengthy hiatus I decided to dust off the Tak and the Ioptron mount and go for the planets - always my favourite target.

I got up around 3.00 yesterday and today. Yesterday the seeng was exceptionally good  but the mount was playing up. Jupiter looked wonderful as usual and despite the mount troubles i managed to find Saturn too. I had thought that Saturn would not be so attractive to observe as the rings were closing up but how wrong I was. It looked stunning - like a ball with a slim needle piercing it. A pin sharp view showed the almost edge-on rings superbly. A wonderful sight.

I thought that the contacts on the mount controller cable could probably do with a clean - and hey presto the mount is working well again. So I found Mars too. The seeing not as excellent as yesterday but still a nice sharp disc. Couldn't make out any markings or polar cap thought. Finished off with views of Neptune and Uranus (thanks to the goto connected to Sky Safari on my iPad) which showed the usual small coloured discs.

Oh and the moon too!

A really enjoyable session - definitely worth getting up for

Nice report Kerry - glad you got a scope out again 🙂

I didn't realise that you had an FC100 DL - I'm still very fond of mine 👍

[kerrylewis]

Hello John. Yes I love the 100DL in fact it’s the only working scope I have now. So light and easy to set up - so easy I must do it more often! 

[davidc135]

The warm weather has brought some fine seeing over recent nights. I compared the view of Saturn at around 3.00 am through an 8.5'' f7.5 Dob and an FC100 Tak. This has an early 1980s non coated objective suffering from a touch of astigmatism after one corroded surface had been reground and polished. Whether this affects planetary performance I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

Both scopes around x200. A crisp view in the Tak with a shadow under the ring and a hint of belts just visible. The narrow gap between the rings and the planet wasn't seen but I think it made its presence felt by a slight local dimming of the rings.

The Dob was able to go one stage further with the gap between rings and the planet sharply defined much of the time.

[davidc135]

1 minute ago, davidc135 said:

The warm weather has brought some fine seeing over recent nights. I compared the view of Saturn at around 3.00 am through an 8.5'' f7.5 Dob and an FC100 Tak. This has an early 1980s non coated objective suffering from a touch of astigmatism after one corroded surface had been reground and polished. Whether this affects planetary performance I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

Both scopes around x200. A crisp view in the Tak with a shadow under the ring and a hint of belts just visible. The narrow gap between the rings and the planet wasn't seen but I think it made its presence felt by a slight local dimming of the rings.

The Dob was able to go one stage further with the gap between rings and the planet sharply defined much of the time.

David

 

Edited Friday at 12:34 by davidc135