12th April 2010 - Skymax 127 observations

[Jove]

Date: 12/4/2010

Place: NW London

Time: 2200 to 0000

Seeing: pretty good

General Visibility: Mag 4 stars visible to naked eye at high altitudes, but limiting magnitude drops towards the horizon, only the brightest stars visible below about 20 degrees due to orange sky glow. No moon.

Equipment:

Nikon 10x50 bins

Skywatcher Skymax-127 scope (f/11.8)

Various Plossl eyepieces: 9mm (167x), 12mm (125x), 15mm (100x), 20mm (75x), 40mm (37.5x), 2x Barlow

Observing conditions over the last few days have been quite frustrating, bright days have been leading to nights with a lot of thin, high level cloud that acts as an effective mirror to the city lights, and pinky orange skies. Thankfully the haze cleared giving one of the clearest nights for some time

My observing patch has a good southerly view, and I spend the evening exploring Canes Venatici and Bootes - both constellations I have not paid much attention to before.

I started at Arcturus, using it to align my new Orion Optics 9x50 finder. This is replacing the 6x30 finder that came with the Skymax and will make life far more pleasant for several reasons: 1) it's a right angle finder, so no more crawling on the floor when looking at high altitude targets and 2) The view through it roughly matches my 10x50 bins, in size and orientation making it easier to scout around an area with the bins and then use the finder to steer the scope onto it's target.

I've been keen to try out my scope on some more DSOs - my previous efforts at hunting down some galaxies in Leo met with failure, so I aimed for a brighter target this evening - the globular cluster M3, at Mag 6 this should be a much easier target for my 5" scope. Finding it was a matter of hopping from Arcturus to eta Bootis, then north via 6, 2 and 3 Bootis, a series of hops made easier with the new finder.

M3 was where it was supposed to be, and was just about visible as a very feint smudge at 37.5x. I tried various magnifications, none of them allowed me to resolve any stars in the cluster, and in the end I found that 75x gave the best view - the cluster nicely framed by a triangle of brighter stars. Though no individual stars were resolved in the cluster, I would say that it had a grainy texture, and the central region was certainly brighter than the outer reaches. I was pretty happy to have found M3, and happy that my scope is at up to the task of showing some brighter DSOs.

Burnham's Celestial Handbook (thanks to everyone who recommended it!) gives lots of information about double stars, and I had noted down a few to look at. The first was Cor Caroli, which I've never looked at before - it was high in the sky and the most obvious bright star between the plough and Leo. It proved an easy split, with two components visible at 37.5x and clearly separated at anything higher. I didn't see much colour difference, the primary was blue white, and the secondary yellow-white: both were very bright - perhaps next time I will try some kind of filter to reduce the brightness and maybe bring out some colour.

Bouyed by my M3 success, I tracked northwards to see if I could make out M51. I may have been able to make out the nucleus, but no structure could be seen. Oh well

Back to doubles, I had a crack at Epsilon Bootis, a close pair at around 3' - I couldn't split them cleanly but did get a 'stretched' Airy disc, with the lobes showing different colours - blue and orange.

To end my session I turned to the ever spectacular Saturn, about which I have nothing to add that hasn't been said here many times A final scout around with bins revealed Mars close to Praesepe - these two together made a very fine sight and a fine way to finish.

[DarkerSky]

Brilliant report Jove - and well done on getting M3. A good capture. I have viewed M3 from a dark sky site in a 6" reflector and only got a partial resolution around the fringes, so I think you did pretty well to make out some graining.

Double stars can get addictive!!