Telescope Reviews: A few Planetaries beyond the NGC

The first clear sky in 3 weeks. In 3 painful weeks. While the rest of Australia is enjoying spring and wall to wall clear skies, here in Novosibirsk it's been cold and cloudy everyday, so it was finally time for a few precious hours to fill this century's quota of clear sky.

Scope: 12" F4.6 dob
Seeing: 3/10 - poor
Transparency: 3/5
Dew: light
Temp: 10C

Henize 2-163
A PNe in Norma. Started the hunt at Eta Ara and something immediately tripped my alarms. Nearby was a bright hazy blob, whose position did not match that of the nearby galaxy NGC 6221. After much excitement I finally realised that there is another galaxy, NGC 6215 nearby, which turned out to be my imposter comet! These 2 galaxies are very bright, quite surprising really. Might have to observe the area in more detail.

Anyway, The PNe was not seen without the OIII filter, although it was suspected at 404x (massive overkill for the seeing at hand). The OIII immediately made it conspicious. At 283x with the OIII, it was small, circular and I suspected annularity. DSS photos do indeed show it to be a little donut.

DeHt 3
A PNe in Sagittarius. Invisible without OIII, but at 283x with the OIII I could make out faint round blob of light, however it was too faint to conclusively detect any detail.

M 1-54
PNe in Sagittarius. Relatively bright, although very small. Seen without filter at 283x and 404x as a tiny roundish blob. Using the OIII filter revealed an E-W elongation but other than that, no detail within the nebula was seen.

PC 22
PNe in Aquila. Very faint at 217x without filter. Adding the OIII revealed an elongated, somewhat rectangular patch of light, with the southern rim being noticably brighter than the rest of the object. I wanted to use higher mag on this object, but being lower in the sky and with the poor seeing, anything more than the 200x range would render nothing but a blurry mess.

Abell 70
PNe in Aquila. Not visible without OIII but at 283x with the OIII I suspected a very faint haze at the nebula's location, visible only intermittently.

NGC 7009 Saturn Nebula
Tried a variety of magnifications on this in an attempt to see the "rings". Surprisingly, despite seeing, my best view was without the OIII filter at 566x. The rings were seen with averted vision intermittently as the seeing boiled away. The knots at the ends were quite evident. Reducing the mag to 353x in an attempt to get a clearer view rendered the rings nearly invisible, and using the OIII did not improve the view.

Uranus
I've been wanting to observe Myanus since the dawn of time. Finally, I got the chance. Because seeing was so poor,I was limited to 217x, but got a nice pale Aqua orb. With averted vision, I could spot 2 tiny points of light on either side of the planet intermittently. Upon later research, it turns out that these were the moons Oberon and Titania! Come to think of it, these moons should be a rather easy catch when the seeing cooperates!

I've also had a look at NGC 55, 246 and the Helix Nebula. See attached sketches:

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S 38º 00' E 145º20'

Custom 12" F/4.6 dob
10" GSO dob
Intes M500 Mak
4.5" Meade Newtonian
Set of Vixen LVWs + TV barlows + powermates
Astronomik 0III, UHC, H-beta filters