After having surgery on my toe, I thus had no work last night (Friday 19 Nov) so took advantage of the clear skies. 7timer predicted good seeing until midnight and skippy sky was showing 9/10 for the whole night.
Seeing was very good from after sunset until about 12:30-1am, when it deteriorated slightly.
Time: sunset-3am
Scope: 12" F/4.4 truss dob
Seeing: 7/10 dropping to 6/10
Transparency: 0/5 (nearly full moon)
Spent the first half of the night largely on Jupiter and Uranus.
Jupiter
At 267x, I caught the GRS just as it was dissappearing over the planet's eastern limb. The spot is pale and a light pinkish colour. The outer rim appeared slightly darker than the interior. As the evening progressed, seeing continued to improve, and at 334x at 10:52UT (9:52pm local DST) I could see some interesting features coming into view in the SEB. Three white ovals, with the preceeding one the largest and the following two decreasing in size were seen, along with a darkish cloud feature that appeared intertwined between the ovals. The most obvious part of this feature stretched between the large preceeding oval and the second oval, looping over the preceeding oval appearing similar to the classic side-on view drawing of a breaking wave.
Ganymede
Seeing was good enough to view the Galilean moons as disks, each with obvious difference in size. At 534x, in moments of good seeing, I caught some surface markings on Ganymede. In the northern hemisphere a dark wedge shaped feature could be seen, while the northern polar regions appeared lighter and whitish compared to the orange-yellow hue of the rest of the moon. Seeing was still blurring the image, but it also settled enough to get a crisp view of the disk momentarily. I also noted Ganymede's orange-yellow colour contrasting with Callisto's Ice-blue, which was a neat sight.
Uranus
Uranus was the clearest I've ever seen it, even at 534x, the disk was pretty crisp, and at 334x it was text-book perfect! On a typical night at 250x things start to go south. So, at 534x I got a nice pale blue ball, and despite moonlight, Titania was spotted. I attempted to see albedo features that some other observers had noted, and I suspected the polar region to be slightly lighter tone, but could not be certain.
I also moved on to
47 Tuc and
NGC 362, I could not believe how crisp and clear they were at 334x, it was amazing. Infact, even at 762x, focus was so good that I had to check the eyepiece and barlow if it really was the combo for this mag. I was getting the image quality I'd normally get at about half that mag. 47 Tuc's core was brilliant, a powdery bowl of suger overlayed with glints of light. A nice semi-circle of stars partially encloses the this central region. NGC 362 was as resolved as I've ever seen it, it's core rather than a haze was more textured and granular.
Then, not long after, I got a real dose of reality. I first hand witnessed the difference between great seeing and average seeing. A couple of hours later I revisited the clusters again, and guess what.... using the same mag of 762x, the resolution was not even remotely as good as what I got just prior. That "snap" focus was gone! It just mushed thru focus, unlike before when I got that satisfying crisp snap into focus effect. From that point on, seeing wasnt as good as earlier in the evening.
I moved on to
NGC 1535 which at 534x presented a nice clean annulus surrounding a central star. It appeared brighter along thewestern rim. The E/NE section of the interior appeared brighter than the western portion, which consisted of a darker croissant-shaped region, but it was brighter than the background sky. A faint, ill defined outer fuzz was seen.
IC 418
Gorgeous at 534x, a brilliant egg-shaped, high surface brightness PNe, whitish in colour with a bright central star. The outer rim appeared brighter than the nebula's interior giving a slightly annular effect, with the NW quadrant brighter. The interior ofthe PNe appeared to have slightly undulating surface brightness.
NGC 2022
A planetary in Orion. Visible as a small circular grey soup bubble at 166x, with only a hint of annularity at 381x. The OIII filter provided only modest improvement, with the annularity slightly more obvious.
NGC 2440
This excellent planetary in Puppis clearly shows two bright white knots at 267x, superimposed on a rounded diamond-shaped background haze orientated perpendicular to the long axis of a line drawn thru the centers of the two knots. Suspected another brighter feature W of the knots. The two knots and the background haze give this planetary a creepy alien like appearance with those glowing eyes just staring at you. At 534x, the two knots are joined by a narrow "bridge", and the knots themselves appeared elongated E-W with the northern one brightest. Another much more subtle bright region can be seen W of the main complex, which is elongated and curves from just west of the northern knot down towards the SW.
Sirius
Tried for the Sirius pup, clearly visible at 534x and 762x but didn't try any lower magnification to see how far I can drop it due to the fact that I couldn't be stuffed changing eyepieces
A great night that probably won't occur again for a long time!