Telescope Reviews: Observing report, October 8th/9th, 2008

Hi friends

Yesterday afternoon was very clear, so I expected a great night. There was a little wind, which I hoped would keep the dew at bay. Unfortunately, that didn't translate into great transparency as I'd hoped, but more about that later.

I went out around 8PM, to look at the Moon, using my 60/850mm Zeiss E. The seeing as a little soft, so I just cruised around a little, and did not bother looking for extreme detail. Clavius was coming nicely out of the morning shadows, as was Copernicus.

After looking at the Moon for a while, I took the scope to the other side of the house, to look a bit at the stars. I looked a little at the double cluster and a few other things. I wanted to look at doubles, but the E 60 doesn't have a finderscope, so finding dimmer stars is a bit of a challenge, especially since the scope was set up to take 0.965" eyepieces. Biggest field I could get was about 1.3 degrees.

I did get a very nice look at Gamma Andromedae, using 170x. The colors were beautiful, and the diffraction rings sharp and almost steady. A really fine view.

I decided to go to bed at around 10 PM, and get up around midnight, when the Moon had set. I overslept a little, so I only got out around 1 AM.

Equipment used was my Zeiss Telemator, Zeiss amici turret and 32mm plössl, 25mm Kellner, 16mm and 10mm Zeiss orthos.

To my dismay, the sky was not very transparent, and had a steel grey look. The stars were shining quite brightly, but the contrast was really suffering tonight. I was not going to the "mountain site" tonight, but just observed from my backyard, inside the little village of Østermarie. The streetlights turn off at midnight, so they weren't an issue. Only light was from the windows of the neighboring bakery, which were mostly covered by my hedge.

I began by taking a peek at M31. Hmm. A bit bland. I had great dark adaption after the sleep (got dressed and everything, without turning on the lights), so the view was a bit depressing. I could see most of the field stars around G1, so again, I was operating near mag 13.

NGC 891 was not as good as Monday evening, though it was definitely there.

I decided to continue visiting old friends, instead of hunting for new targets. NGC 925 was next. This one was really faint. At 26x and 32x, I could barely see it. I had to use U2000.0 to find it. Normally, I've been able to sweep it up. Since I had the atlas out anyway, I decided to visit a few more galaxies in the area. NGC 890 was close by, so I took a look. It was very faint, small and concentrated. Round and featureless. 53x was best.

NGC 750/751 are a couple of galaxies in the process of merging. They looked like a small elongated fuzz at 53x. NGC 736 nearby was even fainter, and looked slightly elongated, evenly illuminated and with no other features.

NGC 777 was next, but I couldn't see it, which confused me, since I've seen it before, and it's brighter than 736. Then the stars began to fade out. Dew on the eyepiece? No, a lot of clouds moving in fast.

Oh well. I took a peek at the Orion Nebula, low in the SE. It was nice, but not very impressive. In a few minutes, clouds covered most of the sky, so I went to bed again.

Clear skies!

Thomas, Denmark