Astro photography is what I do. Visual, well, not really. But...
Last night my partners family was coming over to see the observatory and do some viewing after they went on a nocturnal wildlife tour nearby. This meant the camera had to come off the scope (a rare event) and I needed to find something for us to look at
It turned out they were late (tour took longer than anyone expected), arriving at about 10:45. This meant I was setup waiting from dark onwards. During that time I thought I may as well brush up on what's around, and wow was I surprised! The last time I looked through my 12" LX200 at more than a guide star was probably before I moved my observatory, 1.5 years ago. And before that, probably only twice in the last 3+ years.
I was shocked that even with thin (and patches of thick) cloud covering the entire sky, I could clearly see great detail in many objects...
- Ghost of Jupiter - internal structure and central star clearly visible.
- Eight Burst - clearly visible with some structure visible.
- NGC 3115 - nice elongated disk
- M93 - a nice collection of bright stars
- M50 - same deal as M93
- Christmas Tree Cluster - couldn't see much more than a hint of nebulosity against the foreground cloud.
- M1 - general shape with not smooth edges visible, no internal structure visible.
- M46 - could clearly see the planetary as a nice ring in this open cluster.
- M42 - wow I'd forgotten how big and bright that is in my scope.
- Tarantula - again, wow I'd forgotten how nice that fills the FOV in my scope.
- Omega Centauri - again, forgotten that this shows up as such nice pinpoints in my scope.
- Saturn - pretty good for looking through a tree (not really visible with naked eye because of branches), but it came and went with the main division in the rings visible now and then.
- .. Many more that I slewed to and focused before moving on.
Quite an enjoyable time viewing all this stuff. Now I'm wondering if I'll put the camera back on immediately or do some more visual stuff for another night. I'm dieing to get some shots of several insainly faint galaxy clusters.... but visual was so easy and simplistic.... hmmm..
The visitors left at midnight, I packed up then. Clouds all day sofar today
, 5 hours until dark for them to clear.
Roger.