Terrific seeing in Toongabbie tonight

[Steffen]

I'm having a ball at high power tonight, with much better than usual seeing from my backyard. Of course, there are cloud fields moving through and I'm in and out of the house chasing sucker holes. So far, it's been a good crop nevertheless.

Mars is showing its busy side tonight, and I'm seeing two distinct white patches besides the polar cap, probably limb clouds? The details come and go a bit, as they do, but they are better than I've seen all month.

I've been trying to chase some doubles from my long to-do list, especially Zeta Boötis, but the clouds have only cooperated to show me Porrima so far. Good old puppy-eyed Porrima :sadeyes: I love that double!

Just then I had a terrific, steady and sustained view of Saturn, with great colour differentiation between pale rings and orange, stripey planet, some structure in the outer ring past Cassini (which I'm telling myself is Encke :P ), and a translucent inner ring.

I'm using my trusty 6" f/12 MK67 for all this of course, and mostly the 5mm LV for 360x! I also got to check my collimation on a real star at high power, the seeing is that good :thumbsup:

If the clouds keep breaking up once in a while like this it could become a long night... :)

Cheers
Steffen.

[killswitch]

Darn I was gonna set up earlier but was put off by the patchy clouds.

Thats very good considering the back burning they've been doing this weekend.

[Steffen]

The good news: clouds are pretty much gone. The bad news: so is the seeing.

I finally latched on to Zeta Boötis, but there was no Airy pattern to be had, and hence, no separation. Viewing just 3 degrees above my roof probably didn't help either.

So, I live to try another time :) Maybe at SPSP :thumbsup: You need really good conditions and a clear northerly view to crack this 1.1" nut.

Cheers
Steffen.

[Steffen]

Whereabouts is that? I've mainly been looking towards the North-East and North. I can't smell anything, either.

Cheers
Steffen.

[killswitch]

Blue mountains hazard reduction. There was a noticeable layer of smog on Saturday. They must have stopped after it rained that night.

[AG Hybrid]

Toongabbie seems to get decent viewing regularly. I often get 250X+ nights for planets. Don't know why though.

Hell the best seeing I ever saw was from my backyard. 460x on Saturn with no image breakdown. I could see the hexagonal edges to the polar storm. The seeing that night could have probably supported more but I don't have an eyepiece/barlow combination that can go higher.

[algwat]

I could relate my last session of good seeing to a dark band of low water vapour passing over head here in Melbourne. Perhaps the same for you guys.
see attached link. rgds, Al.
http://realtime2.bsch.au.com/wv_sat.html

[Steffen]

The air is a bit more moist tonight, so I slipped on the dew shield early.

For most of the night the seeing seemed good but not great, at times it looked like my collimation was off a tad. I decided to give it a nudge, removed the dew shield to get to the secondary screws, and lo and behold – both seeing and collimation sorted themselves out! I'm not sure what weird sort of currents this dew shield (no heater!) is causing, but now everything is clear as a bell, at least intermittently.

I'm glad I found my dew shield's dirty little secret, as I was rewarded just then with a gorgeous view of Antares B, at 360x. I've never split Antares from my backyard before, so I'm kind of chuffed :)

Cheers
Steffen.