A great nights viewing - And about TIME!

[davewaldo]

Hi Everyone,

I finally got to have a good nights viewing last night! Not a cloud in the sky south of Brisbane. Brisbane has been clouded over for the last few weeks it seems.

I'm relatively new at this and this was the first time I really sat down to do some serious observing and spent a good amount of time without interruptions (either by friends or clouds).

I was keen for some views of Saturn... and it didn't disappoint! I started with my 14mm UW and it looked great! I had recently purchased a shorty plus barlow from Striker so I put this on and was blown away by the DETAIL!

This was around 9pm so it was quite high up. I don't know much about judging "seeing" but the image was rock steady at 180X and much detail was seen. I have witnessed bad seeing and this was not it! The cassini division stood out like the proverbial, and I could see a lot of banding across the planet! I'm pretty sure I could see the hood as well but not sure. I then tried my 9mm in the barlow and the image was still fantastic! The seeing was holding just fine at 275X although it was very hard to keep it in frame. I much preferred the amazing view through the Meade UW. The planet remained very sharp as it travelled from edge to edge of FOV.

I was extremely happy with these views and even my wife had a look and was very impressed!

I then moved on to Eta Carina (which I had never viewed before). I enjoyed this view however my backyard is very light polluted, I look forward to viewing this one out at Ron's. I also took in some of the great clusters around Carina including the jewel box (beautiful) and also the tarantula (good but another to view at Ron's).

I also purchased a 26mm Meade s5000 plossl from Striker which was a joy to scan around with. Also very sharp.

I also managed to take in a galaxy or two (the sombrero was one) and also of course Orion.

All in all I had a great night and have never experienced such amazing seeing and clarity. I think it might also have been that my Scope was very well adjusted to ambient (my past backyard sessions have been a bit rushed).

Well I just thought I might share my experience with you all.

I hope others had as much joy over the last few days as I have.

Cheers

Dave.

PS. I am still quite amazed by how much I could see with what is relatively inexpensive gear. My whole setup would be worth less than $1000.

[Ric]

Hi Dave, a great report and glad to see you had a great time. Carina and the Sombrero are indeed wonderful sights.

I'm a bit rained and clouded out down here at the moment.

Cheers

[davewaldo]

Thanks Ric.

yeah we've had a couple of weeks of bad weather. Its made all the worse when you've bought new equipment your dying to play with!

[Gargoyle_Steve (Steve)]

Hi Dave, glad to hear you had such a great viewing session, it really rocks when things go well doesn't it?

I got my first scope (the 10" dob, now sold) almost exactly a year ago - first light was the new moon at the start of April last year (as Ron's place of course ) and in that quick year I've learned 2 things.

First is that once you get the hang of collimating accurately, getting the mirror nicely acclimatised, and so on with a dob the night will come when it all comes together suddenly, and you have one of those "Wow" viewing nights where your scope is spot on, the skies are good, and the whole universe is displayed there solely for you to enjoy! Sounds like you just had one of those, congrats!


The second thing I've learned is that some of the best observing sessions I've done (not necessarily anything to do with the best seeing conditions) have been while sitting quiet and alone in some dark spot until all hours of the night, sticking with different objects for 10, 15, 20 minutes, letting the details seep into your eye and your mind until you have wrung every last photon from it before moving on to the next object.

It's fantastic to socialise, chat, compare scopes & eyepieces, etc, etc and I wouldn't give that up for the world, but there is something that can be very satisfying deep in the soul about a quiet and intense observing session, even if it is lonely as hell sometimes.

I hope you have many more great nights coming your way very soon - AND I look forward to sharing some skies with you again in the near future.

Steve

[davewaldo]

Thanks Steve,

It was really nice to spend some decent time on each object waiting for the detail to sink in.

I look forward to catching up with you out at Ron's again soon.

Cheers

Dave.

[Odlaw]

Dave

Glad you had a good night viewing, I have been very slack and work has stopped me from any sort of enjoyment for several months now..

Things have slow down now so I will be do more in the next month. So keep on enjoying and I will see you at Rons next month.

Peter

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Sounds like you had a fine night.
Grab them while you can, with El Nino supposedly gone, there will be more cloudy/rainy weather about.
See you next time.

[glenc (Glen)]

It was clear here this morning. I started out using 20x80 binoculars and looked at all the globulars I could think of (including M4,80,19,62,10,12,53,3,55,54,70,22, 28,68 NGC 104,362,5139,5286,4833,4372,2808,32 01,6752,6388,6541,6441,6397) and some galaxies (including M65,66,84,86,87,58,59,60,83,104 NGC4945,5128,6744 ) then I rolled the 12" dob out and had a look at two comets (Lovejoy and McNaught) and some nebulae (M16,17,8,20 NGC3199,3372,3581 IC2944). Finished up looking at Jupiter with one moon touching it, one in front of it and one next to it. Looked at some open clusters and planetary nebulae too (NGC 5189,4361,3242,6302,6153) Very enjoyable night.

[DobDobDob (Ron)]

WOW that's 56 objects in your session, I don't know how many hours that was over but you sure did 'Milk' it for everything it was worth, very impressive indeed