had a nice time last night out with the dob, absolutely love the pentax 10xw, barely leaves the focuser any more
it was the first time ive visually seen the helix nebula and i was suprised how well it stood out at 150x with an O-III filter, pretty happy since i never thought id get a decent look at it
since i had the O-III in i thought id track down a few more PN. (Saturn Nebula and the Little Gem)
its always suprising how bright these look with an O-III filter.
the moon was still a long way off rising so i swapped to the UHC and pointed towards the lagoon then trifid, ive always found trifid fairly hard to trace out visually but was sure i could make out the dark lanes crossing eachother.
now for some more globs
the Pavo Globular (ngc6752) is always a very nice sight, resolved to the core, also has a bit of an odd shape
back to tuc47, again, incredible. resolved right to the core and filling the fov at 150x
after checking out tuc47 again i put the uhc back in and had a look through the SMC, big blobs of nebulosity everywhere.
tried tracking down a few galaxies with minimal success due to light pollution, sculptor taking the familiar big grey cigar shape in the 24mm pano
after a few coffee's and a movie orion was starting to rise and with the uhc in i was seeing a lot more nebulosity in orion than i had ever seen before even with the moon rising.
while waiting for Mars to get a little higher in the sky i had a good look through the LMC and ended up getting wow'd by the tarantula again (one of my favourite sights in the sky)
now onto Mars, the seeing wasnt really any good at all by this stage but ive never had a decent look at Mars visually so i was determined to give it a go, at 150x the image was stable but there wasnt anything id call detail, more subtle shading but i was happy to actually see it
one thing is for sure, the 1 a4 piece of sticky back felt i put behind the secondary mirror certainly does help a lot more than i thought it would.
