Had a short but quite nice session in fantastic mild weather. Temperature was warm enough to spend the evening in a shirt. Seeing was exceptionally crap, to the point where I couldn't use any magnification whatsoever. Even 100x proved to be unusable.
Scope: 12" F4.6 truss dob
Time: 7.30pm-11pm
Seeing: 0/10
Transparency: 1/5 (gibbous moon)
Despite the worst possible conditions - seeing and transparency wise, I still found some interesting sights just by sweeping the Scorpius/Sagittarius Milkyway.
Started of with
Jupiter. Highest usable mag was the 1x provided by my eye
Lagoon Nebula
Popped in the 13mm LVW + UHC (108x) and saw two dark rifts despite blazing moonlight.
Trifid Nebula
Without filter at 108x, I could barely see the nebula + dark lanes, but the UHC made the dark lanes plainly visible. Not bad!
An inbound aircraft from Tassie was coming over my place so I chased it with the scope ... with the UHC filter still on.... It was mad I could see the cockpit windows dimly lit up. I think it was a Jetstar
I then did random sweeps amongst Sco and Sag using the 32mm TV Plossl (44x) and came across numerous large open clusters and one tight cluster while looking for M22, but didn't appear to be condensed. It had a ring of stars around a red central star. I didn't have any atlases out with me so don't know what it was. Might've been NGC 6568.
Next I came across a very orange star located northeast of the Sag teapot.
Just to the northeast of Shaula, I came across a fantastic collection of ultra-ruddy coloured stars. There were 4 of these, varying brightnesses, arranged in a tight little triangle. A fifth star, equally as ruddy, was located nearby, making for quite a striking scene. Again, because I had no atlas, I can't pinpoint their exact location. And because of the terrible seeing, the stars were more like Koosh Balls, even at 83x.
Next up I took a short look and the SMC, saw about 6 fuzzy patches with the 17mm LVW +UHC (83x). One of these seemed to resemble a barred spiral galaxy, but due to seeing and moonlight, further investigationwas impossible. I also tried to observe 47Tuc, but anything above 83x yielded nothing but a blur. Even at 44x, one could watch the stars sparkle, quiver and bloat.
Despite the seeing being an EPIC FAIL, it was quite an enjoyable session.
After packing up, I discovered I had bitten by mosquitos (already!!) and I found a big ass Red Back spider by the pool. YUCK!
