Telescope Reviews: Observation report 10/9/09

Last night was the first clear night in Melbourne in 186,338 years and 94 days. After being ugly overcast all day, the clouds cleared by sunset. Isn't that pip!

Time: 8:30pm-2:45am
scope: 12" F4.6 dob
Seeing: 7/10 at the start, degrading to 2/10 after 1am
transparency: 2/5 at the start, improving to 4/5.
Dew: light

So I Left the 12" dob out to cool for a couple of hours while I went inside to watch Family Guy, eat pizza and get high........

....on the anticipation of the night ahead

Spirits were good, Family Guy was exceptionally funny as usual, the night was clear, moonrise was not for a few hours. Good times, gooood times.

LSA 1
A PNe in southern Aquila. Could not see it for sure without an OIII filter at any magnification. Hinted at using the 5mm EP for 283x with the OIII, but it was easiest to grasp at 404x using the filter. Still, it was nothing more than a small, extremely faint dust kitty with no discernable structure. DSS images show a tiny elongated donut.

NGC 6818
This is a large, very bright PNe in Sagittarius. Clearly non stellar at 44x and bluish in colour. At 283x it appeared slightly egg-shaped with long axis orientated N-S, with just a hint of annularity, although this wasn't obvious enough for conformation. Using the 3.5mm eyepiece at 404x without filtration this suspected annularity became slightly more obvious, but it was still very vague although certain. The annular feature wasn't a perfect ring, but more a horseshoe shape with the open end pointing north. Checking various images of 6818 on the net confirmed what I saw.

NGC 7424
This is a large spiral galaxy in Grus. Being large and face-on, SB is very low. At 176x I could only make out the faint knot of its core and basically nothing else.

IC 5148
The "Spare Tyre" - see attached sketc

NGC 7009
Saturn Nebula - see attached sketch

NGC 253
By now it was 12.30am and the moon was starting to peak over the horizon so I figured I'll see what the 12" can do on this. Being so large, one is inclined to limit power, but I decided to to pour some fuel on the fire. And what a smart idea it was. Using 283x and 404x, I could see the core, that little knot of light that characterises images, and low-contrast dustlanes strewn all over the galaxy. The most obvious was one bordering the core on its eastern edge. Lots of faint mottling could be seen, and a large bright patch (a starcloud or HII region?) toward the SW edge of the GX, directly W of mag 9.2 HD4555.

NGC 288
Globular near NGC 253. By now the moon was well above the horizon. Fairly large, but quite faint. At 283x several cluster members appeared to be arranged in a triangle with the long end pointing E and with the tip bent southward. The brightest stars also seemed to be arranged in two rows, one at the bottom and one halfway up the triangle, like rungs on a ladder. The densest concentration of stars and associated background haze is located between the two rungs.

NGC 1261
Finding this globular cluster was quite hard in that desert known as Horologium. But it is a rather pretty object, showing obvious resolution in its outer reaches at 176x. The core is nice and condensed. A curious feature was an elongated clump of haze on the southern edge of the cluster seperated from the main body by a narrow dark void. Increasing mag to 283x revealed slightly more resolution slightly closer to the core, but seeing was very poor by now.

IC5148 @ 217x

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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

Edited by HellsKitchen (09/11/09 12:28 AM)