Time: 7:30 - 8:45pm
Seeing: Pretty poor, lots of passing cloud and the sky seemed fairly washed out
Eyepieces: 25mm Plossl and 10mm Pentax
Location: My backyard, Brisbane (40 mins from city on acreage)
Managed to get some observing done last night though the weather ended up being extremely iffy and quite odd. Got the scope out when I got home, let it cool for about an hour or so while I had dinner. By the time I took the rest of my equipment downstairs, the clouds had started to roll in.
I refused to give in that easily as I had spent the time getting the scope out and everything else set up so I sat back and waited for the clouds to pass by Crux where my challenge of the evening lay. NGC3918, the elusive Blue Planetary, fondly dubbed "The Gumball Nebula" by my friend and I. I have searched for this high and low for what seems like months and months. Each time I observe I give it another crack but alas...
Well, tonight I was absolutely determined I would finally find it! There was cloud rolling in from the North and North West and I was a bit concerned everything would be soup in a matter of minutes. Thankfully a lot of low cloud and as JJJ said last night, easy to see, so I watched it float across the South and disappear. In the mean time, I had a peak at Saturn but the seeing was utter rubbish and it was wobbly and seemed smaller than last time (even in the 10mm). Could barely make out any detail on the surface or in the rings.
By this time the cloud had moved out of the way of Crux (for the time being at least) so I got out StarMapsPro and my binos and tried to figure out where exactly I needed to get to to find NGC3918. Boy was it difficult! I had my observing chair so that gave me the patience to keep at it and I'd just got a group of stars in view that I was sure was the small cluster where NGC3918 was located and then...cloud came over again! Grrrrr!
Then there was a random rain shower. It literally felt like mist, I almost wondered if I'd just gone crazy and it wasn't actually raining at all lol. There was just a few scudding clouds so I was pretty perplexed. Weird weather indeed!
Turned the scope around to the North East and had a look at M104, found easily enough without referring to star maps, woohoo! Just looked for the Jaws asterism and there it was. Not much in the way of detail at all but averted vision gave me the slightest amount of clarity in the dense core, it almost began to sparkle every time I looked away from it. The disc of fuzziness running through it was pretty average low, just a smudgy line, no detail at all.
Finally, the clouds parted again. In the mean time I ran upstairs and got my star maps as I'd grabbed the wrong folder to begin with. So I studied that while waiting for more cloud to pass and got StarMapsPro up again. Once the cloud passed over, I took the opportunity to hone in on the same spot again and finally began to see definite patterns in the stars that I could recognise on StarMapsPro. I started to get a little excited but it still took me awhile to study the patterns and get the positioning right.
To find NGC3918, I mainly used the finderscope to line it up. The view I could see, was a cluster of stars, a few brighter than the others. There was a long triangle shape of brighter stars that gave away this cluster as definitely being the right one. This got me really excited then as I knew that if I just took it slow and was patient, that I'd eventually find it. So, I used the triangle of stars to navigate, used the point of the triangle and joined that to the next brightest star in line with it. Okay, so far so good. Then I knew NGC3918 was the next star over, or very close. That star is a lot dimmer so I got that into view and hesitantly had a peak through the 25mm plossl....
AND THERE IT WAS!!!!
I couldn't believe it and I giggled happily like a crazy person and I think I may have even pumped my fist followed by a ridiculous happy dance
In went the 10mm and woah! Even though it wasn't the best observing conditions, so turquoise! A round gumball in the night sky and I found it all by myself! (with the wonderful help of my astro buddies of course!)
With averted vision, I could every now and then see a halo, almost some detail in the structure. It went in and out of focus very easily though but wow, what a sight!
I was so very happy that I finally found it after months of looking! I had a look at Omega Centauri after that, beautiful as usual and detail shifted in and out, the centre seemed to have patches of dark sky between stars, it was really quite stunning, especially in the 10mm.
After that I decided to go for Carina, I had a look at the Southern Pleiades, very pretty and sparkly though still not the best seeing. I was just about to try for Carina Neb and the clouds rolled in again... So I called it a night.
Thankfully I did because when I went down later to put my car away, it was completely overcast and in the middle of a very light shower.
Still, all the same, I found what I had set out to find and under such horrid conditions, I was pretty impressed if I do say so myself!