A Year Later

[Nightspore]

Last year due to ‘The Beast From The East’ the first time I managed to take a scope outside in 2018 was on Sunday, March the 25th. I watched a twilight Moon up until about transit with my 102mm Sky-Watcher SkyMax.

 

In 2019 things are noticeably different, and definitely warmer. Exactly one year later I got to take another 102mm scope out on the same AZ5 mount. 

 

This time the Moon wouldn’t rise until about midnight so I took out my modified ST102 for some rich field viewing.

 

For simplicity I only took four eyepieces out with me. These were a 31mm Baader Hyperion Aspheric, a 19mm TeleVue Panoptic, a 14mm Baader Morpheus and a 9mm Celestron X-Cel LX. The X-Cel was primarily to observe M42 at 55.5x before it became too low for me to view.

 

I had set up by 21:30 GMT, the transparency wasn’t as good as I would have liked and the seeing was about Antoniadi II. So, more or less average for the time of year. The high humidity contributed to the transparency but it was more or less a cloudless sky. M42 was up first with the 9mm X-Cel. The nebula itself wasn’t so defined as it was rapidly sinking in the west. The Trapezium was pretty good though even though the seeing wasn’t the best. I swapped the X-Cel for the 31mm Baader Aspheric and about four and a half arc degrees of field of view for around 16x magnification. All three stars of Orion’s Belt could be fitted into the FOV and the serpentine ‘S’ of Cr 70 was easily seen. The Cr 69 cluster was next followed by Cr 65. I moved on to Taurus and the Hyades, NGC 1746 and M45. The Perseus Double Cluster was easily found then M103 and Caroline’s Rose. In Cassiopeia I always look for NGC 457/ Caldwell 13 aka the Owl Cluster. It’s one of my favourite objects and was discovered by William Herschel in 1787. I turned to sweep Leo and Cancer. M44 was quite spectacular, although I’m still not sure why it’s often called the ‘Beehive’. I found the ‘Hunting Dogs’ of Boötes and Cor Caroli. As the transparency seemed to be getting a bit dodgy Berenice’s Hair proved less immediate. It’s normally a naked eye object for me but after a little bit of sweeping I found it.

 

(Screenshot from SN7 Enthusiast)

I’d spent over an hour with the 31mm Aspheric. This and the 36mm version are possibly among my most used eyepieces. I decided to give the 14mm Morpheus (The Dalek) a bit of a spin in Ursa Major and observed M51, M63 and M94. Finally, at around 23:30 I had a last look at the Perseus Double Cluster and Caldwell 13 with The Dalek, then decided to call it a night.

 

[Smithysteve]

That was a nice report, thanks for sharing. ?

[Nightspore]

36 minutes ago, Smithysteve said:

That was a nice report, thanks for sharing. ?

Thanks, and you're welcome.

[+Streetbob]

Thanks for the report, I too have a Baader 36mm Aspheric and find it a good ep which I use a lot in my Starwave 102.

[Nightspore]

18 minutes ago, Streetbob said:

Thanks for the report, I too have a Baader 36mm Aspheric and find it a good ep which I use a lot in my Starwave 102.

You're welcome. Yeah, my Baader Aspherics and the 19mm Panoptic go out with a lot of different scopes. I have the 28mm Panoptic, but with a choice between that and the 31mm Aspheric the Baader usually wins lol.

[Nightspore]

Sorry, I meant 24mm Panoptic.

 

[Nightspore]

[Nightspore]

I can't get the jpeg to show

Edited March 27, 2019 by Nightspore

[Nightspore]

[Nightspore]

Oh right, the jpeg rendered then lol.