Hi Everyone,
Although yesterday evening started out largely overcast the sky
started to clear around 21:30 local time, so I got my 9.25" SCT out in the
backyard for some observing. The sky still had a lot of cloud, but it was
largely clear to the south & west.
Jupiter was high up in the south west & I initially started visually
observing around 21:50 local, using x230 & x313 magnification. The seeing was
reasonably good The Great Red Spot had evidently just moved off the disk
since the turbulent region in the South Equatorial Belt that follows the GRS
was quite obvious. A lot of other fine detail was obvious. Since the
conditions were fairly good, I decided to do some imaging using a Toucam
webcam. Unfortunately, by the time I was set up around 22:30 the seeing had
deteriorated significantly.... However, I still managed to get a couple of
decent images.
By 23:20 the sky cleared completely, so I decided to do some deep sky
observations. Leo was high up in the southwest, & the sky was now much darker
(limiting mag at zenith ~+5) so I went galaxy hunting. NGC-2903 (mag+9,
12'x5.6') was observed at x73 & x106. It appeared much like a minature
version of M31, a bright oval nucleus surrounded by the fainter main body of
the galaxy of the same shape. Definitely one of more impressive spring time
galaxies. Moving back into the sickle of Leo, NGC-3226/3227 were a short hop
from gamma-Leonis. Both galaxies appeared side by side as faint patches of
light, one more elongated than the other. Each had a starlike nucleus. North
of gamma-Leonis there is small group of several galaxies. However, under
these sky conditions only NGC-3190 (Mag+11.2) & NGC-3193 (mag+10.9) were
readily visible, both appearing as faint smudges of light.
As I finally decided to pack up for the evening, a little after midnight,
I noticed that Hercules was now clear of the roof tops in the east. I swung
the scope over to take a quick look at M-13. At x106 this appeared as
beautiful glittering ball of stars resolved across its face. Pushing the
magnification to x248 gave better resolution of the individual bright stars.
Having observed this object many times over the years, it never ceases to
amaze me how pretty & impressive this object is in a decent sized telescope
under good seeing conditions.
Best wishes & clear skies,
Jason P Hatton