Little Bright Nebulae

[Sam]

After Mick's (Doc) great observing post the other night I thought I would have a go at a few of the planetary nebula he mentioned. I was imaging, or trying to image, the Cat's Eye nebula with the other scope so I had a good chance to have a good look around with the 16".

First up was the moon, as usual and since it was there. Then a good collimation session with a star test. I think I've finally got the big dob collimated properly and what a difference it made. I tried it out on the Lyra double double and was able to cleanly split them with the 6mm eyepiece.

Cats Eye nebula was next (NGC6543) - not detail visible from this very bright nebula. On the imaging side the result was quite bad, with 6sec subs the only ones that showed any hints of detail. Visually it's a very small nebula. In the 6mm it was bright, oval shaped with maybe the hint of some contrast change on one of the ends.

The next was NGC6826, the blinking nebula. This was very easy to find and looked like a fuzzy star in the 32mm. With the 15mm eyepiece the bright central star was quite evident and with the 6mm the halo of nebula around the star was more pronounced. Like the Cat's Eye this one is also very small.

The final one for the evening was NGC6210. This one is in Hercules and is again quite small. With the 32mm it wasn't possible to differentiate it from the other stars but with the 15mm the fuzzy ballness started to show. The 6mm eyepiece showed the fuzzy ball to be quite uniform with no detail or bright stars in the centre.

The planetary nebulae are a tough target set and need a lot of magnification so the collimation has to be bang on.

Sam

[Doc]

Nice report Sam and I'm glad I'm giving you some extra targets.

I'm surprised you couldn't see the central star of the Cat's Eye nebula. It only appeared for me when the magnification was increased to x146. But you used your 6mm at x304 so you should have seen it.

Anyway glad you had a good night.