Its been a lovely night here on the Sunshine Coast. Beautiful and clear, though Having to deal with the lights from the tennis courts next door was a challenge.
I thought I'd do a bit of "Sky Scanning" tonight with binoculars and my Celestron 102mm refractor. I set up at about 6:00 to let everything come to ambient temperature, set up my deck chair and directors chair (one for binocs and one for scoping) and waited for dark to roll in. At about 7:00 the four mercury vapour lights at the tennis courts about 25 meteres away to the north were turned on.
Turned the night from getting lovely and dark to nearly full moon. Trees helped protect some of the yard.
Not to be detered I cranked up the binoculars, got out "The Southern Star Guide" and decided to go constellation spotting and see how faint I could get. Carina, Puppis, Vela and Hydrus. NP. Volans Chamaeleon Pictor, Dorado and Toucana were more challenging and Mensa was only visable through the binoculars. While over that way I checked out 47 Tuc and spent a bit of time wandering through the LMC. On my way back eastward I thought to check out ngc2516, a very nice open cluster. Then down to IC2602 (also called theta Carinae) I even managed to pull out the globular cluster ngc2808 on the border of Carinia and Volans with the binoculars. Of coarse it was then back to the Eta Carina Nebula. Even in these skies it still looked great.
Thought it was about time to warm up the telescope, so I decided to head somewhere else (after checking out Eta Carina of course). Swung on round to Saturn for a peek before it disappeared behind the roof. I then remembered the "Beehive" M44 next door, so I swapped for the binocs again. Another impressive binocular sight. Then over to Leo. I've wanted to see if I could catch M65, m66 and ngc3628 in my refractor for a while now. The tennis had finished about 5-10 minutes ago now so I was getting dark again. I was surprised I could see a couple of dim smudges in my binoculars. So over went the telescope. NP
Very happy. Certainly not stunning but definately seeable, could even pick out the bright cores and faint haziness.
I then decided to use my binocs to chase Hydra's tail across the sky, stopping to pick out Sextans, Crater and Corvus. On the way I switched to the refractor to check out the "Ghost of Jupiter" planetary, ngc3242. Pushed it to 220X mag. but seeing wasn't good enough to really get a clear image. It wasn't too bad a around 130X. Nice to track it down finally.
I could see the glow of the moon on its way so I thought I'd finish the night with some multiple star splitting. Acrux first up, triple star 90" and 4.4" separation. NP. Two beautiful bright blue main stars (4.4" ) clealy split at 220X mag, bit fuzzy at 333X
On to Gacrux, piece of cake. On to gamma centauri, at 1" separation a real challenge tonight. I couldn't quite separate them (even at 333X) but I could see the two distinct colours of orange and bluey white.
By now Jupiter was seeable. He certainly didn't like 333X mag though at 220X the air was steady enough to give a reasonable view. I managed about 5 minutes viewing when the cloud moved in. It was starting to get pretty moon bright by then, so time to pack it in.
I really enjoyed the night, honing up the old manual find and center skills and getting reaquainted with the start of Autumn constellations and some of my favourite late summer/early autumn DSO's. It just goes to show that even with intruding light there is still plenty to see up there with just binoculars and a modest refractor
Clear skies
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