Equipment: Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ, Nikon 10x50 binoculars (new item), 32mm TeleVue Plössl eyepiece (new item), 9mm Planetary eyepiece. Previously viewed objects: Messier 42, Messier 45, Messier 31 Not much of a night out, but I did get to try out the TeleVue 32mm Plössl eyepiece I picked up a couple of months ago finally, along with the 10x50 binoculars I got for Christmas. Both were very nice, but while it was a reasonably clear night it was awfully humid.
Equipment: 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope, 32mm, 25mm, 15mm, 12.4mm eyepieces, tabletop mount, AstroMaster 76’s mount. New objects observed: none Previously viewed objects: Messier 44, Messier 45, Messier 42, NGC 1981, Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Trapezium New equipment! A 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope from Orion with a tabletop mount, suitable for packing in one’s luggage and taking on a trip.
Equipment: 16” Dobsonian, 55m, 12mm Tele Vue eyepieces. Also looked at M13 & the Veil Nebula through someone else’s telescope. New objects observed: NGC 7335, Stephan’s Quintet (NGC 7317, NGC 7318 (a & b), NGC 7319, NGC 7320), Mayall II, Maffei 1 Previously viewed objects: NGC 7331, Messier 31, Messier 32, Messier 110, NGC 3077, Messier 81, Messier 82, Messier 13, NGC 6960, Messier 45, Messier 33 Location: Sunrise Point, Mt.
I've fairly diligently kept up keeping records of what I've been observing, either by tweeting about it or noting it in the notes on my iPhone or in SkySafari (also on my iPhone). It's been a pretty brutal last year and a half or so, weatherwise, so I had surprisingly few chances to even get out and observe anything. Plus, once you've fallen behind a bit it's hard to pick yourself up and get caught up.
Equipment: Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ, using the 32, 15, 6, and 4 mm eyepieces and the ultrablock & OIII filters.
New object observed: NGC 2392 (Eskimo Nebula)
Previous objects observed: M42, M81, M45
Notes:
It was a brutally cold night, at about 12°F, but I was able to stay out for about an hour or so until my feet were too cold to go on. It turns out that at that temperature, extension cords (for hair dryers) are extremely stiff, and my stool that I sit on was frozen stiff. Couldn't turn it or make it go up and down.
At the beginning of my observing session, I was able to find M81, but not M82. I think, in the future, when I try to find them I'm going to need to make sure that I put my eyepatch on ahead of time to give myself a fighting chance of seeing them better. I would have gone back to it later, but didn't find the time before I was freezing too much.
The big find of the night, and an appropriate one given the weather conditions, was seeing the Eskimo Nebula. While the OIII filter didn't help with it at all (not sure because of conditions or what), the ultrablock did some. They weren't really very necessary, though; just looking at it with the naked eye, though, was enough, and I was even able to discern some detail from it, in that I could see the center being brighter than the dimmer outside. It didn't look like the pictures, of course, but I could see how it looks like that from what I saw. Not too bad.
The Pleiades and Orion Nebula were, as usual, stunning. Mars was not quite far enough over the house to look at last night; by the time it was high enough that I could see it standing up but still too low to get with the telescope, I was having to defog my eyepieces with the hair dryer (which worked nicely) and the oddly frozen extension cord, and I couldn't feel my toes anymore. At that point, I elected to go back in.