Auckland had a cold clear night last night. Absolute stunner. Rain disappeared after washing all the sky clean and the southerly came in and cleared the clouds. Didn't have time to get the big scope out due to earlier committments but about 9 pm decided to assemble the grab & go little 80mm Achro. Wrapped up warm, went outside. Temp about 4>5 C.
20 & 15mm SV EP's, scanned my way up and down the Milky Way picking up little globs and groups. Sky was clear enough to easily see dust around Eta Carina and later on Lagoon and Trifid,.. and they were still quite low on my eastern side over the CBD !!
Saturn, small but perfectly formed, mid high in NW sky. No moon, Excellent !! The 20 and 15 Super Views were just excellent for a lovely wideview scan, you get a much better picture and feel for the sky this way. Out there for agood hour and a half, cold but happy.
Getting pretty cold now so took it all inside to pack up but had a quick look at Stellarium and saw that Sombrero was west of and below Saturn. Formed a nice triangle with Arcturus and I'd found Sombrero a few weeks before finally.
What the heck, give it a go.
Neighbours lights are all off, 10:30 ish. middle of the lawn. Pick my spot in the sky and start scanning, check Stellarium again, find my little 3 star ( actually 4 but too close to seperate one pair in the little 80mm) 'pointer' asterism. and carefully slide up to wee dot of a star and wait. Suddenly it pops out, M104, exceedingly faint and If I hadn't known what to look for and where I would have missed it but averted vision and patience gets it's reward. A real Galaxy in a CBD location with 80mm !! No definition of features, just a wee smudge in the FOV, but enough for one night.
Just so pleased with my little scope, it's a heck of a lot of fun and as a grab and go it is just perfect. Takes me about 2 minutes to be out there from packed in it's case.
Ok, I'll stop raving on about it now ..
