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A nice Quickie
An unexpected clear sky happened this morning so I got the 12" out for a look at the moon, Neptune, Uranus and Jupiter.
Seeing was prety trashy, skippysky's sub-ordinary outlook was realised. Dew wasn't as bad as has been in recent times. Stayed up the whole night, rather than getting a couple of hours of shut eye earlier, thanks to a whole barrage of awesome TV shows and Formula 1. So, right now I'm on 40 hours with no sleep.
Time: 2am-6am
Scope: 12" F4.4 truss dob
Started off with the moon. Seeing was naturally poor. It was quite fun tracing the limb at 667x, observing its uneveness and mountains/hills against the jet black of space. The central peaks of Petavius and Langrenus were fun to observe at 667x, like flying over it. Got a nice view of the terraced walls of La Perouse with good relief provided by the setting sun. Finished off with a nice wide field at 60x, then got moon blind for like half an hour.
Uranus and Neptune were both resolved into disks at 166x. A bit awkward to find as they look stellar at low power, and their colours seemed a little washed out. Best views came at 267x, nice tiny disks, Uranus a slight aqua colour and Neptune pale bluish. Very seeing dependant targets, these smudge out easily.
Best view of Jupiter came at 205x. The SEB was faintly seen, along with a couple of white ovals in the south temperate zone. A couple of narrow belts were seen north of the NEB.
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