30 March 2024

[Mike Q]

Saturday night was kind of clearish, so I rolled the 10 inch out and adjusted the setting circle to north and went for it. This would be a low power cluster kind of night, so the ES 30/82 was in the focuser.

The double cluster was the first target of the night and was still a lovely sight, even though the tree limbs.

M36, 37 and 38 all revealed well with 37 being the brightest to me. Here is a question. Who names these things, I certainly don't see a starfish when I look at M38. We will chaulk it up to a lack of imagination on my part I guess.

The Rosetta Nebula revealed well and a bit of Nebulocity was visible even with no filter. M46 with its faint planetary revealed well, a filter would have brought it out better as well.

I hit about a dozen open clusters with M44 being the brightest and then switched over to galaxies.

First up were M81 and 82. They both revealed some detail in the ES 11/82, but the best images came with the 14/80 LHD with both just fitting in the FOV. A quick scan of the sky said I better get moving as the clouds were starting to roll it. M95 and 96 showed up nicely in the 20/80. LHD. M84 and 86 were visible but a haze was now in the eyepiece and starting to conceal the images. The only glob for the night was M68, it was there but I was loosing the battle with the clouds rapidly. I decided the Sombrero would be the last target, no soon do it get it lined up and the clouds covered it. That was the end of the session.

A couple of takeaways from the night. First, I need to use the 10 more. Go to technology has spoiled me. I used to be a demon with a setting circle and angle gauge and I was definitely out of practice. Still, I was able to hit 19 targets in about 1.5 hours and that isn't too bad.

[helicon]

Nice report Mike. Congratulations on seeing the nebulosity in the Rosette. That's not easy to do and nets you the VROD for the day!

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[John Baars]

Congratulations on the VROD!

[Mike Q]

Nice report Mike. Congratulations on seeing the nebulosity in the Rosette. That's not easy to do and nets you the VROD for the day!

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The nebulosity looked like haze. It was noticeable but not jumping out at you. The next time I have the 16 inch out I will hit it again and also try a Oiii or narrow band filter to try and bring it out. The increased aperture won't hurt either.

[scribbly]

Hi Rob, congrats on the VROD. I'm really enjoying my new (old) 10" DOB, such a nice aperture! A nice range of objects, some not observable from 35S but then being 35S I'm not complaining either :-)

I'm coming to terms with a non-goto scope, actually just a rigel finder as my scope is an ultra portable and thee is no setting circles etc (so light weight that I probably cant even use an 30mm finder scope??). I'm certainly not getting to that many objects in a whole night, let alone 1.5hr.

I hope you were somewhere near the tranist path today; the best I could do from Oz was watch the NASA broadcast. Not even close to the real thing :-) I was lucky to go to WA last year, my first eclipse. Amazing.

Cheers
Phil