The sky was amazingly transparent (for the second night running!). The Milky Way already easily visible although a couple of lights from houses were still an annoyance until they shut off at around 1am. The seeing also seemed to be pretty good.
I set up the 102ED refractor on the Alt/Az and immediately got to work with Saturn after a short cool down with it being lower down had a much shorter window of opportunity to view it.
Saturn just seems to give more with further magnification and this refractor just continues to surprise me how well it handles high power without it going mushy at all. With the 5mm Pentax XW for 143x, the Cassini division was sharply defined, however at approx 220x with the 2.2(ish)x Barlow with the 7mm Pentax was spectacular and perhaps the sweet spot, with the Cassini division very clear and reasonble in size and also now more surface detail of the planet itself as the brightness was now brought down sufficiently. Using the barlow with the 5mm Pentax for approx 2.2mm and 325x I half expected the view to break-down somewhat however the view was still mainly good but too dependant on the seeing level and my ability to track suffiently with stability on the alt/az mount (not recommended for this level!). I would say though that the ideal contrast has been reached somewhere between the two powers of 220x and 325x though as with moments where I could get it stable enough at this high power the view was really quite something.
I was now "waiting" for Jupiter to come up sufficiently so I switched to doing the rounds of some
M33 - After being able to see this easily with the binoculars the previous night, I chose the largest focal length I had (a 32mm Baader Plossl) to maximise exit pupil and this seemed to work well although M33 was a mere ghost on glimpsing into view and would be easily missed if you didn't know what you're looking for. Using higher power just made it worse.
M31 - Sufficiently large view with the 32mm Plossl to encompass the all three galaxies with a touch of structure of M31 coming through but very subtle.
Veil Nebula - Again with the 32mm Plossl to maximise exit pupil together with the Astronomik OIII. Conditions were considerably better that a previous week where I'd attempted this and not really got a good view of the Western Veil. However this time it was nice and obvious but with little detail. The Eastern Veil showed a touch more and came though as large bright arc of nebulosity in the eyepiece but without any definition.
North America nebula - With the 32mm Plossl and the Hbeta this was very diffuse and difficult to see such a large object.
M57 - The Ring Nebula was a lovely sharp view with the Pentax XW perfectly framed within the starfield. Further power trying the 5mm Pentax XW diminished it rather too much for my liking.
M102 - Small but the galaxy was reasonably bright.
Approaching 2am by this point it was time to view Jupiter as it had risen sufficiently, The
After a little while viewing Jupiter, my 12"
Back to M33.. and with the 28mm Maxvision eyepiece this was now very obvious as a nebulous blob however I couldn't make out any structure.
M31 / M32 / M110 - This just blew me away with the 28mm eyepiece. I wouldn't normally use such a large exit pupil viewing galaxies sticking to the 17.3mm Delos for most observations and dropping down to 10mm for detail... but this was quite the revelation in a decently dark sky. M31 showed real structure for the first time with dark lanes easily discernable. The view just about got it M32 and M110 in the same field with M110 really showing brightly and extended. Best view I've ever had of this group!
Dropping down to Mirach and viewing Mirach's Ghost (
Back to the Veil... With the 28mm without any filter I could just about make out a touch of the Western Veil around 52 Cyg but it was very faint. I had to switch here to the 32mm Plossl as I only have 1.25" filters but once using the OIII , the nebula stood out immensely. The knotting / twisting nature of the Western Veil was very apparent and beautiful to follow along the entire length. The middle section of the Veil (
Now Jupiter had risen high enough it was time to back to this and leave the
So, the difference between the 12"
Jupiter presented exceptionally well with the 12"
In the 102ED by comparison, even though the exit pupil was approx 1/2 that of the
Finishing with Mars... I used the 5mm Pentax for 300x which gave a nice decent sized scale. I really had to stay at the eyepiece for extended amounts of time to get the best from this as its brightness and suspetibility to seeing made it difficult, however at 300x the brightness was tamed enough for it to show large darker regions on the surface although I could not see any polar caps.
It was now getting on for 4:30am and the sky was now quite light so it was time to call it a night and get some well earned rest...
Looking good for another session tonight - I think purely on