[Rob_K]

The sky cleared beautifully at about 2:30am this morning after a dirty, cloudy evening, and as I had the camera out shooting for comet 81P Wild, I decided to drag the reflector out on the back lawn. Glad I did, as it was a chance to reconnect with a few familiar objects not seen in evening skies for a while. Frequent checking of the LCD screen meant light adaptation was not quite up to scratch so nothing adventurous was attempted! Tasco 4.5” f8 reflector with 21mm Celestron X-Cel eyepiece; transparency excellent; seeing poor. Objects seen included:


Comet 81P Wild in Virgo: No trouble picking up the position after imaging the field! Quite difficult to see in direct vision, just a tiny faint glow that was nonetheless fairly strong in averted vision. Around mag 10 now, and at times it seemed to contain a star-like point – may have been picking up the inner bright coma. No sign of the tail.

Leo Triplet, galaxies in Leo: M65 & M66 were bright little oval glows, but the fainter streak of NGC 3628 took a short while to come into ‘focus’. Light adaptation more than anything. Beautiful trio of galaxies that fit neatly in the field with the 21mm eyepiece, a sight that was hard to leave.

M104, Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo: No charts, and this was about the only object I didn’t hit first-up, but quickly located it panning about. Lovely little bright gash against the dark sky! Good sense of the shape of it, but couldn’t quite get the dark lane, which I’ve seen before.

NGC5128, Centaurus A, galaxy in Centaurus: Haven’t seen it for a while, a nice roundish glow which at first it gave the “Pacman” view typical of a small scope. Eventually I was able to see the dark lane right through the galaxy.

NGC5139, Omega Centauri, globular cluster in Centaurus: What can ya say that hasn’t been said before, stunning!

Saturn in Virgo: First view this ‘season’, not that great because of poor seeing. Titan was plainly visible. Even at 47x it was difficult to focus, and a brief attempt with a Barlow only emphasised the shimmer. But still an inspiring object and it will be interesting to watch the ring plane open in the years ahead.

Mars in Leo: Very disappointing, just a tiny, bright, reddish shimmering ball! Didn’t bother powering up.


Cheers -