Post by kimg on Feb 26, 2019 23:05:39 GMT
I left the scope parked, but figured that as the alignment wasn't great I would run through the setup again, this was a mistake, the mount would not play ball and after the second attempt, after lining up on Dubhe as the last of the three star setup, I sent the scope to M51, it pointed at something in Leo, so I then sent it to M1 and it pointed at Cassiopeia, I gave up and shoved it about manually to find stuff, it was quicker.
First target was a double star, STT 82, a mag 7 and 8 pair lying just off the crux of the V of the horns of Taurus with a separation of just 1.3" Nothing I used could show this as anything but a single star, I went up to 500X (which is extreme) but it refused to even elongate, the seeing was really good, very little shimmer a all, so I guess this pair were just out of reach.
next another double, still in the Hyades, STF 559, a very nice pair of Mag 6 stars one white, the other blue separation 3" and these split cleanly at 200X.
Unusually, the next two objects were both planetary nebula, the first, an IC object (I can't find the thing on the chart now, so don't have a number) was pretty much just like a star, with an UHC filter it showed a slight fuzz, but no clear disk. The second was NGC 1514 and is south of the California Nebula, but still in Taurus, it has a very bright central star, which with no filter is all you can see, but with an OIII and by using averted vision, the large could of gas surrounding it becomes visible, this was a pretty interesting object as I had not seen it before.
I tried to see the California nebula, and thought to detect a slight brightening of the background as I moved into the region, but this was no more pronounced with the UHC than without. I am not entirely convinced I saw it.
Staying with the mission impossible theme, I headed over to try once more, the elusive chess piece, the horsehead in Orion, but again, despite spending a solid ten minutes staring at the exact spot, nothing resolved into view.
I finished off with the open clusters in Auriga, M38, and NGC 1907. M38 looked it usual splendour of blue stars, while NGC 1907 refused point blank to resolve to anything other than a milky blur.
If I had not had to waste 40 minutes trying to get the GOTO system working I might have seen a good deal more, but it was nice not to miss out on such a good evening all the same.