[simmo]

Date: 21/01/14
Time: 9-11pm
Location: SE Perth suburb
Instrument: 10" SW dobsonian
Conditions: still warm, night slight breeze towards the end, some altocumulus clouds
Seeing: nice night slight twinkling of stars at the start of the night but not quite perfect at 200x magnification
Eyepieces: 25, 12.5, 9, 6mm UO orthos, (67, 96, 133, 200x magnification)

Object: NGC 2392 PN (Eskimo)

Constellation: Gemini
Mag: 9.19
Size: 0.8 x 0.7 arcmin

Notes: small but nice PN with easily seen central star surrounded by its outer shell at higher magnification. Not much colour seen.

Object: NGC 3242 (Ghost of Jupiter)

Constellation: Hydra
Mag: 7.6
Size: 0.7 x 0.6 arcmin

Notes: easily seen PN even through the 50mm spotter scope. Very nice blue green colouring. This PN gets better the higher you go with magnification. Colour will fade but the details become more pronounced. You can see different variations of intensity of the cast off outer shell. At one point there was a moment perhaps that the inner star was visible with averted vision. Awesome to view at higher magnifications.

Object: IC 4191

Constellation: Musca
Mag: 10.6
Size: 0.3 x 0.2 arcmin

Notes: very small PN which was about the same size as the stars close by. This was more a test than anything. Not much detail or colour could be seen and perhaps a slight fuzzy edge at 200x magnification. Perfect PN for the blink test.

Comments: Another nice night for viewing apart from the mozzies at the start with no breeze to disperse them. Thought seeing lots of dragonflies at dusk was a good sign but nope. Probably the best was saved for last the ghost of Jupiter. Awesome. Actually hit it first up with the 6mm still in from the last PN and felt like i'd cheated a little. Dropped back to 25mm and worked my way back in to enjoy the increase in details and felt less guilty. Probably the biggest disappointment was NGC 3195 in chameleon that was talked up as being one of the most viewed PNs in the Southern Hemisphere (sky safari 4). Not much really there so must be one for the big boys that one. There were a couple of others but these were the standouts for the night. Sorry Malcolm couldn't get to m46 as it was covered with cloud.