|
Hourglass Nebula
Decided to go outside for a short session last night. Well, it was clear and calm - looked perfect to catch Jupiter before it disappears behind my roof forever.....or so I thought.
Telescope: 10" Newtonian
Seeing: 2/10
Transparency: 3/5
Lim Mag: 3.5-4 (where sagittarius was), 4.5 (zenith).
Dropped in the 9mm plossl for 138x and it didn't take long to be dissapointed. Melbourne has turned on its normal seeing yet again. After a while however, I got a few good glimpses at 166x, even hinting at a few festoons. Well clearly tonight won't be a planetary night.
Decided that I'll do some DSO observing in Sagittarius, I had to go inside and grab more eyepieces. Did that and had to re dark adapt. Then I realised I forgot my nebula filter. Oh well, I wasn't going to loose my hard earned dark adaption to retrieve it.
I decided I'll try to find the Hourglass Nebula in M8. Easy to find, just look for the brightest portion in M8. At 227x, I could just hint at the hourglass. Although the seeing was shocking which is normal in Melbourne's climate, I needed more magnification to see it. At 416x, the seeing made a mess of everything. Generally, tonight would be a < 200x night. Anyway, at 333x I got my best view of the object. Using averted vision, I could see the shape, like two triangles joined at their pointy ends. Surrounding the nebula was a circular haze. I could also see a darker area adjacent the western edge of the Hourglass figure. Well, I was impressed considering the light pollution across the western half of the sky.
I also took a look at M22. At 166x I was almost convinced I was looking at an open cluster. Interesting. It was resolved, but didn't appear condensed. Using 333x, I basically got a larger version of what I was seeing at 166x. The stars seemed to spread across a background haze with dark lanes running across it. Maybe I was observing something else, but I was where M22 was supposed to be.
The Trifid Nebula wasbarely visible. At 138x, I could just barely make out the nebula and dark lanes. It was sitting in the light polluted west so I wasn't surprised.
The Planetary Nebula NGC 6818 was a nice, greenish circular orb, not unlike Uranus. At 333x, I the central region appeared slightly dimmer than the outer areas. Because of the seeing, tonight was not ideal to observe PNs.
I also checked out the globular M69. At 69x, it appeared as a fuzzy ball. Using 227x, the outermost stars started to show resolution and became noticibly more granular in appearance. I didn't use higher mags as the seeing basically made a mess of anything above 200x.
|