G'day Lismore and NGCles,
Sorry to hear about your house Lismore Bloke, everyone is beating their chests about how we need rain blah blah blah, but too much of that is just as bad as a drought.....atleast in a drought your property won't be damaged....
I use Vixen LVWs in my 12". Great eyepieces, all focal lengths can be used in either 1.25" or 2" mode which to me is important because some of them don't reach focus at 1.25" in my scope, and they recieve overwhelmingly favourable reviews. Only problem is that they are hand grenades, but on my 12" weight is not an issue
NGCles, thanks for your comments
I was mostly flying by the seat of my pants as my observation list which I drew up last month has become obselete thanks to weeks of Melbourne cloud and DSE horror. By the way, DSE stands for "Department of Sustainability and Environmnent", and these are the culprits for filling our skies with smoke over the last few months
I reckon NGC 3576 would be quite famous if it were placed in say the northern sky and not overshadowed by its obvious glorious neighbours in a region of the sky only accessable to only a lucky few percent of the worlds amatuer astronomers
It is quite a spectacular object and certainly one of the most interesting and unique nebulae I have observed. Nearby NGC 3603 is very interesting aswell, with it's dark globule but needs good seeing and high mag to be fully enjoyed.
I was hoping to see the dust lane in 5746 but seeing was genuinely horrid so I suspect that played a part in washing it out.
I loved 6337 the instant I saw it, it was just a random pick from the star atlas and I was pleasantly surprised to see such a large, bright and awesome almost perfect ring floating among the richest starfields anywhere in the sky!
I'm surprised the "Bug Nebula" isn't more well known, it is large and very bright as far as planetaries go, and that's from a suburban sky. I'd bet if it were located north of the equator, it would be as well known as the Ring in Lyra, Because I'm sure it's larger and brighter and perhaps more detailed in moderate sized scopes.
That whole scorpious/Sag/Oph/Scutum/Aquila region is a fantastic place to hunt planetaries, if you manage to pull away from the mindblowing starfields in that area
A lot of them are PK objects, but if you never never look, you'll never never know what you'll be greeted with
Going by the HB and Millenium atlases, this area has the highest concentration of planetaries anywhere in the sky....and yes it is located south of the equator naturally