11/9/09

[irishbloke]

Friday 11th – Sat 12th Sept 09 10pm - 1am

I had been consulting the weather guessers all day. Metcheck (yeah I know, it’s *rap! But it looks so good!), and 7timer had tonight as not great. Metoffice cloud prediction looked reasonable good with cloud clearing. I did know that mist could be an issue and thought the other two must have been factoring that in.

Anyway, scope went out the back around 8:30pm to cool. There was plenty of colourful and beautiful high cloud about but I hoped it would go away. Cup of tea and some NCIS later I was packed and ready to go to the football pitch. It’s never dark but it is darker than my back garden and has a full field of view so is well worth the effort.

Place Football pitch at Drumbo

Limiting mag 4.5

Seeing 3/5

Transparency started out not so bad but by end it wasn’t good.

Equipment: Skywatcher 250 PX, Skywatcher 7mm Nirvana, 24mm Panoptic, 32mm Panaview, Skywatcher UHC filter.

Saw a couple of meteor’s during setup and throughout the night.

Could see milky way over head and using Ursa Minor as a gauge I could see all but the dim one in the bucket (eta Ursa Minor). Quick look at stellarium told me this has mag of 4.95. So limit visual mag was about 4.5.

Started night not convinced of my with collimation so blinded myself with touch and Cheshire. I should just set it during the day and leave well alone!!

First target was Vega to see if I’d sorted the collimation. Scope had cooled for about 1-1 1/2hr but the rings still swam a bit. I could just make out the double-double could just make out.

Next I went to Jupiter which was low down in the sky when I first arrive. The bands were there but not much details. The 2 moons of Io and europa were very close together and I was later able to see Io go behind Jupiter before I left.

M57 - I love looking at this. Looks well through both 7mm and 24mm Panoptic

M13 – This glob looked great and I enjoyed looking at it through both eyepieces. I moved on to finding the M92 glob but it took me an age to find and I decided to break out the atlas. Got it much easier now.

Keeping with the atlas I wanted to find M56 near the ring. I ended up using 19lyra and alberio to find it. I was an averted vision object but I did catch a hint of stars.

I moved then to Cluster st1and down to find to Brocchi’s cluster. From there I moved to find the globular cluster M71 in Sagitta. It was a dim object that was helped by averted vision in Panoptic and still dim in the 7mm. The light from the surroundings give me a bit of hassle. A hood might help, will have to get me one.

Next object was the Dumbbell nebula M27. It was actually very clear and a first time I had found it myself. Quite chuffed.

Next M29 open cluster. I had a look around Sadr and with the 32mm panview and UHC filter. No nebulosity visible and I’m starting to be annoyed by the coma in it. Sky was pretty grey.

Moved over to M31 and M110. They were good but I saw the difference a dark site makes. Last time at Killylane M31 was huge. I then tried to find M33 but as much as I tried I couldn’t find it. Defeated!

I found M76 planetary nebula Perseus but it was dim. Found it using bright stars in Andromeda. Moved then to find M34 a nice open cluster, using Algol (which is pretty dim) and Almack (nice double) orange and blue.

Moved on to the Double Cluster in Perseus. This was brilliantly framed in the Panoptic. It’s a breathtaking image.

Started to look for M103 and had bit of trouble being sure I had it. Got open clusters 663 and 659 (Not sure what catelog that is)for sure and think M103 was seen as a sort of sausage dog group of stars. Yeah my imagination is a bit mad.

Tried to find owl neb m97 and m101 in ursa major but with no luck. By this time the moon was up and there was more moisture in the air greying the sky.

I did find m81 and m82 though using charts. Dim but was there.

I had a look at Jupiter through out the night and while the view did get better I didn’t get a lot of detail. I tried to see if I could find Neptune. Couldn’t be sure. A laptop would be a big help finding something like this. Maybe get out with Stellarium some night soon.

Any way it was a great night.

[Doc]

What a great night you had. I struggled for ages with M33. It has really low surface brightness and thus is very hard to find. I bet you were looking at it and didn't know.

A great entertaining read.

You should start a Messier count in your signature.

[iamjulian]

Thanks for sharing. I am envious of your view of M57, I still cannot find that little blighter.

[irishbloke]

For me it showed the advantage of using star charts. I had a great time working out where things were and how to move across the sky with the dob.

I have a rigel finder but am considering getting a telrad and some charts for it.

Brian

[Andrew]

Nice report - sounds like you had a great night. I have only seen M33 a couple of times and then only the core. I keep meaning to have another go at a darker site. I agree, star charts are a must. I have some free charts that I downloaded from a web site. They show stars to mag 8.5 which is pretty good I think for free charts - you can find pretty much anything with these ~ if it's visible!

[lunator]

It's sounded a great night.

I have only seen M33 from kelling. Where I am in London or anywhere with a bit of light pollution it just merges into the sky.

Cheers

Ian