A great night

[pvaz]

I finally had a break from the clouds, after 3 long weeks, and what a night it was!

It was a clear sky, from horizon to horizon after a storm and with great seeing conditions. Besides a couple of distance road lights, everything was dark. All the houses in about a 1km radius are sparse summer houses, currently unoccupied, and the rest are unilluminated vineyards. The milky way was probably as bright as I've ever seen it! I could hardly believe my luck.

I had a list of 13 Messier objects witch I had never seen before and was able to see them all in 2,5 hours observing. Also revisited a couple of other "old ones I love".

Here's a resumed report:

M52: Could see many stars resolving, didn't bother to count since there where so many. Great sight.

M103: Happy to finally find it, but not one of my favorites.

M34: Found it easily with the telrad. Great sight.

M72: Checked! NEXT! (Waste of time really!)

M73: Revisited. I'm really into globular clusters.

M74: Just a grey-yellowish patch of light, but still I loved it. Galaxies always amaze me, wish I had a camera connected to the brain so I could see more detail. (Hopefully in my lifetime people will invent one.)

M29: Same as the picture, checked, NEXT.

M57: Revisited. I'll never get tired of watching that ring.

M46: Revisited. Small but great globular. Resolved a large amount of stars.

M39: Nice OC. Toke me a bit to find, but gave me some joy once I did. Liked it.

M71: Revisited. Quick peak while hopping to M27 (wife wanted to see it).

M27: Revisited. Quick look.

Break time! (wife demanded telescope time to observe M27)

And back on the road!

M37: Great, dense OC.

M38: Great OC too. Had a neighbor I later found to be NGC1907. They make a beautiful pair.

M31,32,110: Revisited. Great view, time just flew by while I was waiting on Taurus to be completely above the orizon.

M1: Crab Neb. Small grey and fuzy, toke a bit to spot. Stayed there for a while.

M36: I noticed I had missed this one on the map. Went back to M38 then hop to it. Nice OC.

Jupiter: Making time for M35 to rise.

M35: Dense and nice OC.

(break posting some replies at stargazers)

M43: Chery on top of the cake! Finally sow it!

Went in for a snack and to print some other telrad maps, moon came up mean while, so I called it a night. Hope tomorrow is good, to keep the Messier list goin.

[Phil Fargaze]

A solid night`s observing there, you are very lucky to be somewhere with dark skies.

I like your vision for the future, I can imagine having a ccd chip connected to the eye!

[Beyond_Vision]

Sounds like you had a great night and thanks for sharing it with us

Regards

Kevin

[pvaz]

Went out again today. At first the night was great but most of the new objects where below the horizon. Still I had 4 M targets available on my list plus the white rose OC.

Managed to see:

M101: Nice galaxy, a bit faint but I looked for a while and it kind of "grew" as my eyes adapted. Again, too bad my eyes can't pick the detail from the spiral.

NGC 5866: Thought I had M102. Then I tried to confirm in google earth but there isn't even a pic of it. I zoomed in the area and found a galaxy with a triangle made by 3 stars, just like the one I soo. It was NGC 5866 and 5867.

M81 and M82: Nice ones. 2 big galaxies, I toke the time to observe them at the same time with the 32mm EP.

NGC 7789 (white rose): Recent suggestion from you guys. Looked pretty cool, make me start liking OCs more then I did. Some are indeed disappointing, but once you know the good ones, there is plenty to see.

Some clouds started to appear and the rest of the list was under the horizon so I came in for now.

Glad Doc advised me to buy a Telrad. It's the single most useful piece of equipment I have. I'm starting to look like a human GOTO. The 32mm 70º EP was a great addition too, it's the one that get's used the most for finding/observing DSOs.

EDIT: I checked M102 in Stellarium. According to it NGC 5866 is the same object as M102. That takes another 4 Messier DSOs off the list.

[Doc]

You are welcome on the Telrad tip, it''s a cool bit of kit.

And great reports I enjoyed reading them.

[Talitha]

Great report, thanks for posting! I agree that an easy-to-use and accurate finder can make all the difference in the world. Mine's a red-dot (not a Telrad), but it's still a lot quicker than using a standard finder scope. And congratulations on M43.. have you been trying to see it for a long time?

[pvaz]

Great report, thanks for posting! I agree that an easy-to-use and accurate finder can make all the difference in the world. Mine's a red-dot (not a Telrad), but it's still a lot quicker than using a standard finder scope. And congratulations on M43.. have you been trying to see it for a long time?

Somewhat. I just bought my 1st scope about 1,5 months ago and the opportunity just never came either cause of weather or late hours. My east and south horizons have mountains and trees close by so I have to wait for Orion to rise a bit before I could observe it.

[dobserver]

Great reports, I think it's great your wife enjoys spending time at the eye piece too.

Sounds like you are really lucky with your skies.

Steph

[pvaz]

Great reports, I think it's great your wife enjoys spending time at the eye piece too.

Sounds like you are really lucky with your skies.

Steph

Yeah it is. She's not as much into it as me, but she likes to observe "the pretty ones" (as she calls them ).

The skies are indeed good, though the weather could be a lot better. About 2 years ago I had the hard choice to either take a highly paid job and stay in Lisbon or move back to my birthplace. My wife was unemployed in Lisbon, so we moved back to a small island with 60k inhabitants (vs the 2.5M of Lisbon) where we could both have decent, but a bit underpaid, jobs.

Still don't know if it was the best choice but we are happy, the sky is definitely better then Lisbon's and so is the quieter and healthier life stile.

Cheers,

Paulo

[pvaz]

Went out again.

Observed the Orion nebula in detail for about 1 hour. Tested all my ep's on it and the OIII filter. Could see more area with the OIII but got the impression it's a bit too aggressive for my dark skies, since the nebula increased in size but lost some of the detail in the center, brighter, area.

The 32mm gave the best wide view while the 15mm allow me to resolve the small triangle in the center and even see a fainter star near one of the vertices. Maybe it's a double star, at least it seamed so. There was a lot of contrast and detail in some darker regions near the brightest area of the nebula, that became even more visible with averted vision. I didn't see color without the filter, with it I sow a green hue to it. Maybe it was just the filter effect.

Then moved to M78. Much less impressive but still enjoyable and another one off the check list.

Moon came up meanwhile. I toke a look along the terminator and after that I pointed at mars. The seeing near the east horizon wasn't good, so I came back in.

Paulo

[Phil Fargaze]

I would have gone with your decision as well. I`m fed up with living near the city.

[Rusty Strings]

Great reports, thanks for the info, I'm as jeolous as hell. I was hoping for a clear night tonight, but the fogs rolled in.

Totally agree on the Telrad. I never could get on with a magnifying image inverting finder, the telrad has made finding DSO's loads easier.

John