vespine
05-04-2006, 09:47 AM
So about midnight it finally cleared up nicely and got over an hour of observing in, for the 1st time since getting my 12" LB last Wednesday! :D If I didn't have to be at work in the morning I would have stayed up later. My viewing location is St Kilda so city sky glow is quite noticeable, but being a newb I don't really know much better yet :)
I started off by locating jewel box and IC2602 in carina (which has been a favourite binocular object of mine) and scanning around without really trying to work out what I was looking at. After a while I eventually attempted to find a few things. Some I didn't have any luck like 2070 tarantula, and found NONE of the planetaries 3242 in hydra, crux 3198 and vel 3132. Admittedly I wasn't trying TOO hard yet, there'll be plenty of time for sky scouring, last night I was just trying to enjoy myself without too much effort, wanted to spend time looking not searching ;) I'm guessing the planetaries are what you'd consider "challenging DSOs"?
Things I did manage to find and fairly confidently identify were Jupiter ;) 3372 eta carinae, 2516 car and managed to hunt down M104 Sombrero, I'm pretty sure.. But the Belle of the Ball award from last night goes to Omega Centauri! I've spotted this grey smudge in my binoculars before but couldn't quite work out what it was. I just remembered it as it approached the zenith so I pointed my scope and seeing it resolved into stars for the 1st time was, well, quite stunning! I just about felt like it was trying to suck me into another world! :)
After that I felt quite satisfied for the night! It was after 1 am and well past my bed time but I'm sure I slept better on account of such a successful mission :) The Light Bridge more then lived up to expectations. I did some scanning with a 2" 40mm EP but the meade widefield 26mm eyepiece that comes with the Deluxe LB got the most use, sometimes putting it in my 2x Barlow and occasionally having a little look with my GS 9mm EP. I even gave the 9mm a go with the barlow on Jupiter and it wasn't too bad, could see the bands and faint colour when the image was stable.
I started off by locating jewel box and IC2602 in carina (which has been a favourite binocular object of mine) and scanning around without really trying to work out what I was looking at. After a while I eventually attempted to find a few things. Some I didn't have any luck like 2070 tarantula, and found NONE of the planetaries 3242 in hydra, crux 3198 and vel 3132. Admittedly I wasn't trying TOO hard yet, there'll be plenty of time for sky scouring, last night I was just trying to enjoy myself without too much effort, wanted to spend time looking not searching ;) I'm guessing the planetaries are what you'd consider "challenging DSOs"?
Things I did manage to find and fairly confidently identify were Jupiter ;) 3372 eta carinae, 2516 car and managed to hunt down M104 Sombrero, I'm pretty sure.. But the Belle of the Ball award from last night goes to Omega Centauri! I've spotted this grey smudge in my binoculars before but couldn't quite work out what it was. I just remembered it as it approached the zenith so I pointed my scope and seeing it resolved into stars for the 1st time was, well, quite stunning! I just about felt like it was trying to suck me into another world! :)
After that I felt quite satisfied for the night! It was after 1 am and well past my bed time but I'm sure I slept better on account of such a successful mission :) The Light Bridge more then lived up to expectations. I did some scanning with a 2" 40mm EP but the meade widefield 26mm eyepiece that comes with the Deluxe LB got the most use, sometimes putting it in my 2x Barlow and occasionally having a little look with my GS 9mm EP. I even gave the 9mm a go with the barlow on Jupiter and it wasn't too bad, could see the bands and faint colour when the image was stable.