Telescope Reviews: M30 & Jupiter from the City

Hi all! It's been a long while since I've been active on CN or have done much observing. A couple years ago I moved from the Central Florida suburbs to the South Florida metro-region for career purposes. I never thought that I'd miss suburban skies with limiting visual magnitudes around 5.5 at the zenith! Dismayed, I stopped observing for awhile and left my scopes in Central Florida with a relative since I don't have lots of storage space in my apartment.

Recently, though, I got the observing bug and decided why not at least observe the moon and planets? So I picked up a Borg 77ED so I could have a portable "urban scope". Despite my skies having a limiting visual magnitude of around 4.0 near the zenith, I'm pleasantly surprised by the views I had with my first proper session last night.

M30 was an easy catch by star-hopping from Jupiter. Since I lacked good star charts, I was using a field-sweep method and initially caught M73. With a quick view, M73 definitely looks non-stellar. After being fooled by this asterism, I shortly thereafter found the globular. Despite severe light pollution (faintest stars visible unaided were about mag 3.0 nearby M30), the globular presented a modestly bright hazy core that was occasionally punctuated by a nearly stellar center. An irregular haze of unresolved suns surrounded this core, and the cluster seems to be lopsided. I was able to perceive some mottling during brief instances, especially at 148x, but the perception was quite fleeting. With the lower power, there seemed to be a faint detachment to the cluster's east.

After spending about an hour with M30, I moved-on to Jupiter. This was my first time observing Jupiter in-detail and sketching the planet. The North and South Equatorial bands were prominent. If I have my directions right, the North band seemed lighter and pinker than the South band. The latter was more irregular. The polar regions both seemed like hazy grey zones. I tried a couple color filters on the planet. A #80A blue filter didn't seem to help too much, but a #12 yellow definitely made the planet's cloud bands seem crisper and better defined. Here's my first planetary sketch - the original was done in the field in b&w. I redid the sketch using my detailed color notes indoors with colored pencil.

It's great to know that even with a very small telescope and lots of light pollution, there are still fantastic sights awaiting in the starry heavens!

- Jay
South Florida