G'day fellow astronomers! After what seemed like an eternity of cloudy nights, we finally got a clear night ( well partial clear night) over here in Perth. The waxing gibbous moon was up but I gotta take what's given. Out came the 10 inch dob for some quality time.
Started in the constellation of Gemini in search of the Eskimo Nebula NGC 2392. I have observed this wonderful planetary nebula before, but this time I wanted to hit it with higher magnification then I've used on it before. I used my 5mm eyepiece barlowed to give me 480x. At this power the central star was easily visible with the nebulosity surrounding it appearing a light green. A wonderful sight.
I cruised around Centaurus next, stopping at Alpha Centauri first. Both stars in this closest of doubles to earth looked magnificent at 100x, shining brightly with a delicious light golden colour. I moved to open cluster NGC 5617, a fairly rich cluster, though rather muted by my light pollution in suburban Perth plus the light of the moon. There is another nice open cluster near by, NGC 5606. This is an interesting cluster, small, compact and moderately rich. I have dubbed it the "Syringe Cluster" due to its shape
Some clouds were starting to rear their ugly heads so I quickly turned my attention to near by Circinus. Got a Squiz of Alpha Circini, a beautiful double star. Close to Alpha Circini is an asterisk that I've never seen before. It looks like an elongated arrow. At the tip of this "arrow" lies the double star CO Circini. Please check this out if you can as I found it to be quite an interesting asterism.
Clouds were coming and going so I decided to pack it in, early start at work the next morning. Not a bad 45 min session despite the moonlight. Clear skies to you all
Joe