5 - 6pm
Scope:
Moon - With the 10mm BCO the Moon was an amazing sight! Most of the planet in the view at the same time the detail at the terminator / south area around Tycho really stood out With a 4mm eyepiece the power was just about managed by the seeing conditions Great sharp view it's been a long time since I last used this scope and made me remember why I love the 80ED... more to come later...
Jupiter - With the 10mm BCO provided an excecptionally sharp view with two central bands showing strongly with brown/red colour. Other banding / was observed but not distinct. With a 4mm eyepiece the view was reasonably steady at times allowing a better view of the within the bands with a hint of detail within them. All 4 of Jupiter's moons were to one side spaced evenly.
19P/Borelly - Comet in Cetus - This was just above the house rooftop and so I couldn't see nearby Deneb for the closest starhop from a bright star. So a rather longer start from Gamma Pegasus.. uff. I managed to find my way down fine to Cetus and finally got to its position only to have the focuser give way and slip (a typical issue with the Skywatcher 80ED!) I had to manually shove it back in to position focusing finely by hand while locking up the focuser so it wouldn't move. The conditions were hardly ideal however with the 10mm BCO (best darn fuzz finding eyepiece in my arsenal for this scope) I managed to eek out numerous times with averted vision a small patch of fuzz which was evidently at an angle.
6pm it was time to take my daughter to a class for an hour or so, so I brought the 80ED with its cr*p focuser back in... The 12"
8pm - 12pm
Scope: 12"
Not in any particular order for the 12"
My targets for the night were two other comets and making some observations in the Herschel 400 list (mainly open clusters because of the moon...). A few other random objects get thrown in for good measure of course!
67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko - Comet in Cancer - Found relatively easily and needing a touch of averted vision to get a bit more from it with the 10mm Delos. Reasonable size with a slight extension to it.
C/2019 L3 (Atlas) - Comet in Gemini - Uff! Was really difficult to find in such a low mag star field needing numerous attempts. Think I would have failed if it were not for using a 60mm finder. Once i'd got its position this was actually a surpising direct vision object that resembled more of a very faint indistinct globular cluster than a comet.
nearby
Iota Cancri Double Star - Stood out as I was actually star-hopping for a
M44 Beehive- Not quite the scope to observe this with! However, a good field of bright stars - went to it as it was close by after another observation and I haven't observed this in quite a few years!
12pm - 1:30am
Scope: 120ST
Just before midnight my 12" secondary mirror had given up completely to the dew it was hopeless to even attempt to warm the thing up since everything was sopping wet. :p The transpareny and darkness seemed to improving constantly though and with the Moon starting to get a little out of the way I opted to bring out the 120ST.
M36 - Nice to see a bright open cluster after some of the Herschel 400 clusters earlier being so difficult at times! Really enjoy this one with the 10mm Delos showed it perfectly against the background starfield.
M42 - It was starting to get a little low by the time I came to observe it and was quite unremarkable - amazing how much the light polluter (otherwise known as the moon) affects it after some visual treats to this last week
M101 - My the time I'd got to this around 1:15am the transparency had gone up yet again and the Moon has gone down sufficiently not to be too bothersome for the other side of the sky. The galaxy core at least was quite evident direct vision with some averted vision required to see a little extension from the core.
Leo Triplet - Both M65 and M66 appearing bright with the Delos 17.3mm. I could only make out a faint possibility of
So at 1:30am, I brought the session to close - everything was fully iced or extremely damp! Needed the next half an hour just to reasonably dry stuff off apart from the
