I had brought my 4 inch Vixen refractor. Accompanied by a 30mm widefield eyepiece, a barlow and my Leica zoom. Always good for surprises. But when the queen of the atmosphere gives you a benevolent nod, the gift is complete.
As a simple city dweller, I think it's quite something when I can see the Andromeda Nebula with the naked eye. Pooh...
The mount responded willingly when I had Arcturus looked up with the sun still above the horizon. Fortunately, the previous evening's alignment exercise paid off ; Arcturus welcomed me happily twinkling in the center of the image. As yet, after twenty minutes of cooling, it would look nice and tight.
Soon I sought out the first double stars. Albireo, Delta Cygni and SAO 84572 in Hercules, a tricky one with 1.2" separation. Piece of cake, with two fingers in his nose.....
Gradually looked up the first bright summer objects, M13 was among them of course, two propeller blades visible.
Then the more difficult objects, with or without UHC filter. The real party started around 0:00 and ended at 4:00. Below is a list of the around 50 objects I observed. It would be going too far to discuss each of them, but I will not withhold some highlights from you.
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- All parts of the Veil nebula, culminating in the eastern part NGC6992, which slid through the image like a beam of light. As icing on the cake, I sought out neighboring Sharpless 2-102. That was no problem with a UHC filter. Thanks to my 30mm widefield eyepiece.
- Speaking of lightbars, M57 was no flaccid smoke ring here, but leapt forward powerfully and brightly. The accompanying little star of magnitude 13 was visible without averted vision.
- The loose globular cluster M71 in Sagitta demonstrated that even with a 4-inch instrument you can easily see more than 12 separate stars.
- The fireworks of
- Some Galaxies were not to be missed, the home untraceable M110, M33, M108, M101 and M109 fell from the tree like ripe apples. What a wealth to live in such dark surroundings!!!
- Then there was a fat cloud...? Ah well no, just the Scutum Cloud with the breathtaking M11, Wild Duck Cluster in it.
- And ohhh... the rich harvest in Sagittarius, the deepsky objects tumbled over one another, each one more beautiful than the next. M17 can count on a place in my heart. M8 actually too...it's too much for a simple city observer who happens to get to spend a night in Valhalla. Problem is: one wants to see all....preferably at the same time.
Murphy came to take a look. Just then I was looking at Saturn. Suddenly the power was down. ??? I got the power from an outside outlet. Using a voltage detector I came to the conclusion that suddenly the minus pole was also under weak current. That's not good. The fault circuit breaker had not tripped. So I took the power from inside the house. Cost me 20 minutes. ( All the time fearing for a defect in my handcontroller of course. Thank you Mr.Murphy) . After Saturn, Jupiter peeped out above a roof edge. Terrible seeing, but the shade transition of Europa was clearly visible. I thought it was a nice finish. Although I had not finished my holiday-wish-list yet.
Full list of the session in random sequence:
- Clusters with or without nebula:
- Planetairies
M57,
- Globulars
M13, M92, M56, NGC6229, M71, M28, M22
- Galaxies
M31Andromeda, M32, M110, M33, M81, M82, M101, M108, M109
- Double stars
Albireo, Delta Cygni, SAO 84572
- Miscellaneous
-Planets
Saturn, Jupiter
It is the same as the one in my Avatar, but a tripod underneath.
