big brother final was on and i was soooo not interested but the girls were (weirdos
), So I stated (yes i put my foot down on this one) that i was going outside till 8:30 (lol)...
15.8.05 7-8:30pm
seeing 3-4/10
scope was the usual 8"er and a mix of EPs were used.
very very windy!!
I told cheryl that I was going to just look at planets for a while, "yeah, suuure!" came the reply.
I started with venus in extremely bad and windy conditions, was hard to make out the shape but the scope kept moving and venus was very low so it was a no goer in the 10.5mm. my 15mm SV wasnt much better...
jupiter. 3 moons visible in my 10.5mm's FOV which meant one was hiding... I waited for about 20 mins to see if it would "pop out" while trying diferent EPs. (6.5 500 series, 10.5 TV, 15 GSO SV) but alas it did not. the seeing was so bad that i couldnt hold the bands sometimes... jupiter was getting low by now anyhow...
tired of wobbly planets i moved over to the crux. I spit alpha in the 10.5mm brilliant blue in colour I love this star(s), one of my faves. even in the bad conditions i could tell my collimation session of a few days ago left it near perfect
. I cruised around the various open cluster in crux and carina with the 10.5 and 15mm comparing the two. Its amazing how well the SV works in my scope some times, tho i have to get my eye in the right position.
down to omega cent, heaps of stars resolved but over allnot very bright.
next I decided to hunt down something I have never seen in my backyard before, the ring nebula and it neighbour the dumbell. after minimal star hopping the ring was found and suprisingly bright it was too. much too easy find. I put in my broadand filter and it stood out like a sore thumb.... lovely, i can see why people rave about it. the dumbell was harder as i was star hopping using a hand drawn chart (done myself) that had very few stars on it. I mainly put star colours on there so it was like 2 red stars right from the ring then turn left (or up as it were). finding the red stars was a pain because they wernt a brilliant red, but i got there eventually. the shape of the dumbell, tho improved with the filter was still vaguish in shape tho easily seen. I was very suprised to see these considering the amount of lights left on next door and in my own house (without curtains drawn) and the howling wind, poor seeing and the 70 odd % moon.
any how it was a hour and a half well spent
oh sorry, there werent any willows... just losta wind
