Last night sky was nice and open and it stayed that way. Seeing was moderate, but became better as the surrounding environment cooled down during the evening / night. To my surprise no mist formed.
As usual I started out with Jupiter and Saturn with my 120mm Evostar. Only every now and then they showed some spicy details. The
GRS was quite obvious though.
Half an hour later I did some exercises in the zenith, with the focusser, since I had adjusted the tension of it. Soon thereafter I turned to M27 with UHC, furthermore M71 an
NGC 7789 ( Carolines' Rose). I changed telescopes. It was the 150mm
f/5 his turn now. I examined the very same last two objects and decided that under the circumstances, and given those two objects, the 120mm gave a nicer view. The 120 showed a bit more needlepoint stars and gave thus a more beautiful impression. ( I had established this difference already in earlier tests). Needless to say that The ET cluster ( Owl-cluster NGC547) , NGC663, M103 , the Double Cluster and the accompanying Stock 2 were lovely objects in the 150 mm Achromat. The planetary
NGC 6781 in Aquila was more difficult, but still doable with averted vision.
Marstime.
Once again, change of instruments. I had left the 120 mm
Apo outside, so there was no cooling down to be done. Mars was already reasonably high up and blazed forward. Seeing had become better. Details were instantly visible. Only every now and then they seemed to dissapear. With my Leica ASPH Zoom eyepiece I zoomed down from 236X to approximately 180X and decided this was the best. I had taken my planetary weapon, the legendary Pentax XO5 eyepiece with me, and put it in. The difference was very well visible. Not more details, but the details that were visible with the Leica showed more contrast in the XO5. I had left my sketching material inside the house, but made a quick one as soon as I came in....on a simple blocnote. Sorry for that, I found my sketching bloc this afternoon underneath some magazines, a bit sloppy. So I had to remove all horizontal lines of the original blocnote. More an excercise in Paint than sketching, and more time consuming than a simple search for my sketch-book.
Nevertheless, here it is.
- Mars 20 sept 2020 (final).jpg (40.68 KiB) Viewed 2253 times