Telescope Reviews: awesome night out, galaxies galore

Observing report for January 18th.

Tonight was the night of our astronomy club's January star party. It was a beautiful night. The transparency was about the best I have seen in our valley. The site was fairly dark. The temperature was around 29F. I received my new Thinsulate Glommits from Cabela's just in time. There was a bit of light reflecting off the lake but it didn't seem to interfere too much with viewing. I cleaned the corrector plate on my scope this week and was anxious to see if it would provide better views. It sure did! The early part of the evening was spent sharing views with some locals who were very interested in our club and what the different types of scopes we owned were capable of showing. Thanks to all my friends at Cloudy Nights I was able to answer technical questions. We had fun comparing views between my SCT and a Vixen FL102.

The Andromeda Galaxy was very nice at 140x. Encouraged by this, I went over to the Sculptor Galaxy. It was less bright than Andromeda but mottling was quite obvious across the nucleus. I'm not normally a big fan of galaxies, but the seeing was good and the transparency was great so I took a look at M51. Wow! Both galaxies were extremely clear and we could make out the faintest of spiral structures. I was very excited as I have always wanted to see the arms of a galaxy. Next stop was M81. Absolutely beautiful at 140x. M82 was the biggest shock of the entire night. The unusual structure of the object was very clear, even with direct vision. Everyone who came over to have a look would back up, shake their head and go back for another look. M78 was very interesting. The nebulosity was much more obvious from this location. Dark skies truly do make a difference. Two stars, like eyes, were peeking out. I have to say that this object is rather creepy looking! The Owl Nebula was fun. We could not see the eyes but enjoyed the view nonetheless. I installed my focal reducer and took my first ever look at the Christmas Tree cluster. It still didn't look much like a tree. This is the main drawback to my scope. The narrow field of view makes clusters rather difficult. I had a friend locate it in their Dob so I see the entire cluster. I understand now why this is such a popular object. Jupiter was like a jewel in the sky. I tried out the Mars filter From Sirius Optics and was very pleased with the performance. It cut the glare and made the bands really stand out. I will definitely use this filter on Jupiter quite often. With the filter still installed I swung the scope over to Saturn. The violet color and dimming nature of the filter are not suited to Saturn at all. It changed the view from crisp and clean to more of a soft, pastel watercolor. M45 was glorious with it's wash of blue color and bright stars.
I must say this was a spectacular evening. Cleaning the corrector plate made a definite difference, my new gloves were warm and toasty and I acheived a major milestone in seeing so much detail in M51.

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Queen of GOTO
Life is short.... get a massage!