mac
11-10-2009, 12:46 AM
I was about to head to bed at midnight tonight, when I decided to wander out onto my apartment balcony to see what was happening with the weather. There was a break in the clouds and Jupiter was staring at me. So I grabbed my 10" Dob and set it up for a 'late night' peek.
The seeing was pretty bad, even after the scope had cooled down, although there were moments of wonderful clarity, lasting only a second or less. Darkish spots could be seen in one of the prominent bands on Jupiter's surface.
After that I decided to look for Neptune, but first I had a look at NGC7009 (the Saturn Nebula). I'd never seen it before, and it was a 'wow' moment for me. It was very bright and fuzzy, and the Saturn shape could be easily seen with averted vision. Anyway, back to Neptune. It's pretty much right next to Jupiter at the moment so it was fairly simple to find (thanks to Stellarium). At 139x the disc could be seen, even though it was tiny. A slight improvement was had at 166x.
Cloud cover took over that part of the sky, so I swung my scope south and decided to look at 47 Tuc for the first time.
WHOA!
Now that's what I call a glob! At magnifications of 83x and upwards, individual stars were easily resolved into the core. Nice.
Then for the finale, I decided to take a look at Uranus. With the help of my little laptop running Stellarium, I was able to star jump my way over to it, where it was clearly resolved as a disc, even at a low magnification. At 166x it was nice and round! I'm not sure if I was imagining it but there may have been a moon next to it - but only occasionally visible in averted vision.
Anyway, it was a good night considering the conditions... :)
The seeing was pretty bad, even after the scope had cooled down, although there were moments of wonderful clarity, lasting only a second or less. Darkish spots could be seen in one of the prominent bands on Jupiter's surface.
After that I decided to look for Neptune, but first I had a look at NGC7009 (the Saturn Nebula). I'd never seen it before, and it was a 'wow' moment for me. It was very bright and fuzzy, and the Saturn shape could be easily seen with averted vision. Anyway, back to Neptune. It's pretty much right next to Jupiter at the moment so it was fairly simple to find (thanks to Stellarium). At 139x the disc could be seen, even though it was tiny. A slight improvement was had at 166x.
Cloud cover took over that part of the sky, so I swung my scope south and decided to look at 47 Tuc for the first time.
WHOA!
Now that's what I call a glob! At magnifications of 83x and upwards, individual stars were easily resolved into the core. Nice.
Then for the finale, I decided to take a look at Uranus. With the help of my little laptop running Stellarium, I was able to star jump my way over to it, where it was clearly resolved as a disc, even at a low magnification. At 166x it was nice and round! I'm not sure if I was imagining it but there may have been a moon next to it - but only occasionally visible in averted vision.
Anyway, it was a good night considering the conditions... :)