OK, I know it's not a particularly challenging target, but I was very happy to locate it after a few previous unsuccessful attempts!
After the last three occasions I've been out with scope were 1) mostly showing visitors the sights, 2) clouded out at night, 3) clouded out during the day (eclipse); I finally had a good evening Sun 10th Feb.
Headed for my not-so-darksky, sort-of-close to home site, for a few hours. Ended up spending too long and heading to work with too little sleep!
Took what is now my grab (and pack and grab more and pack some more etc
) and go scope - the 8".
Clouds stayed away. Wind settled down to a non-irritating gentle breeze then died after 11pm. Cool - I nearly put my scarf on! It was mitten weather (Just checked the reports and it was probably down below 6 overnight there). Seeing - well I'm still not much good at estimating but the stars were dancing happily just in and out of focus and I couldn't clearly see the E and F stars in the M42 Trapezium. Not so good, I think.
Quick summary of the evening targets - mostly the favourites, as the whim took me:-
Two day old crescent Moon, M42, Tarantula and Eta Carina Nebulae (experimenting with nebula filters), M1 (filters didn't help this target at all).
Open star clusters from Crux, Centaurus and Carina.
Globular clusters in the area, Omega Centauri, 47 Tuc, NGC 362, NGC 2808. I think I saw, for the first time, a globular or two in the SMC? I'll have to come back to these later.
I located and bid final farewell to 8P/Tuttle. Don't think I'll look for it again.
Galaxies - Couldn't pull NGC 253 out of the Melbourne-bright western sky. But NGC 5128, M104, the Leo Triplet were all available for the taking.
Planets - Mars, featureless orange blob for me. Saturn later at night - nice, three moons visible to me.
Back to that nice double star x Velorum. That sure is nice and seems to be placed in a dark bit of sky, so they do stand out. Practiced finding the double in my 12x60s - easy.
Now to the challenge I had set myself - the Blue Planetary, NGC 3918 - in Centaurus. I had tried a few previous times to star hop to find it, but got lost. I think I expected it to be more distinctive to the newbie eye, but it's not - until you find it! So this time I had Stellarium running beside me to guide me, used my inverting adapter with 32mm TV plossl to give me a view I could correlate to the screen, and away I went from delta Crucis. Taking it steadily, I got there. Distinct colour and non-pinpoint object. Yep that's surely it. Pushed up the magnification to see the angular size, compared to adjacent stars. An aqua colour, it seemed to me.
Today I went looking for a picture of it in its local starfield to be absolutely sure. It seems one Scott Adler has a photo of NGC 3918 and adjacent stars here:-
http://www.blackskies.org/images15a.htm
Yes, that's it, that is what I saw, many thanks Scott!
Happily packed up around 12:30am. A hint of dew starting to form on the scope. Laptop battery had died, didn't bother swapping to the spare!
The future. Well, to get serious with the 12" and, apart from also getting serious with Glen's 95 DSO list, I want to locate and observe VY Canis Majoris - just to say I've see the largest known star (so far!). It looks like a challenging starhop to a non-descript 9.5 apparent mag star.
You know what I like about this hobby? You can see with your own eyes what it is all about. Most other things, you have to rely on others, or photos, videos etc. For this hobby, just wait until the object is above you in clear skies at night and look at it yourself, with perhaps no more that a bit of glass between you and it! I think that is exciting and a real feeling of achievement!
Eric
