telescope: 4.5" reflector
seeing: 6/10
started off trying to observe jupiter but I became somewhat paranoid about my collimation and spent half an hour tinkering ith that. That's it, when I graduate from uni and get a job, I'm getting a refractor for planetary viewing!
Well, despite predictions of great seeing by various weather maps, the usual crud persisted. Those maps are dirty old LIES! Seeing was only so-so and thus Jupiter was blurry most of the time. Dissapointed and having seen enough of a fuzzy tennis ball, I decided it was time for some DSO hunting.
Hunted down the M57 ring and was not dissapointed. Despite being only 15º above the horizon, at 121x with a Narrowband Nebula Filter I could clearly make it out as a ring and its northern edge was slightly brighter then its southern edge.
I then looked for the dumbell but with the lack of a proper star chart it took me forever to find it. Then I found it. Using 75x with a narrowband filter I could make out the dumbell shape. It's SW region was noticably brighter than the rest of the cloud.
sketches
http://img462.imageshack.us/img462/1752/stuffwu4.jpg
btw, is there a way of displaying the image on these forums?