Great Seeing in Backyard

by Mark Bracewell

Jupiter and the Moon were very pretty naked eye in Scorpius but too low to take more than a short peek on my hands and knees. Despite the low altitude the seeing was just amazing, very steady Moon and 8 or 9 distinct narrow bands on Jupiter.

After moonset the transparency worsened a bit, but things were OK at zenith so I thought I would give my new Lumicon UHC a try - it's supposed to help with LP right? So in goes the new 24 panoptic with filter. Pretty, all the stars are blue. I looked for the veil, I have ever even tried to look at this before aside from a quick 'nope, not there.' Very pleased to find not only could I see it, but easily!

NGC6960 is long and gently curved, somewhat fuzzier to the east and thicker in the south, fills the field of view of 1.2 degrees. No sign of the involved star 52 Cyg with the filter in, didn't even register it was there until I came in to look at the chart.

NGC 6992 seems a little smaller in length, and chunky and wider in the south. Both seemed to have some mottling - trying not to let pictures I have seen interfere with what I could really see. I think some darker night will help me tease out much more. I didn't stay too long as Dobsons hole is a drag.

I went looking for 7331 again because of all the talk about it. I remembered it as a very bright object from the one time I saw it at Coe (much darker there). It took ages to find because from here it wasn't very bright at all (and no, I didn't forget to take out the filter :) . At 200x could make out some longitudinal assymetry, but not nearly dark enough to look for any real detail, forget the companions.

NGC7662 Blue Snowball - annular and pretty bright for this night, shifting from direct to averted seemed to suggest it's slighty brighter on east/west edges @200x, the darker center maybe 1/2 as bright as the edges, so not like a torus like M57 is, more like an antacid tablet. I'm calling it the Rolaids nebula. With a barlow @ 400x it was much more obviously annular, but not as pretty a view.

Over to Beta Cas to play with star testing for collimation, here the quality of seeing really apparent, text book patterns and dead still except for the undulating currents coming off my still cooling mirror - the ambient temp was dropping faster than usual. A chance to double check my previous conclusions about whether a behind-the-mirror fan helps with blowing off these currents in my scope - it does, but only a little bit. Did I mention I love my mirror?

Looked at favorite doubles nearby - Eta Cas @58x, beautiful, Sigma @200x the best word for this 3' split is pungent.

NGC7789 - really lovely cluster at 125x - many very faint stars.

Clobbered by dew all over the finders at 11 PM - that was a surprise. Good night though :)

Mark