Observing report - August 3/4, 2015

05 Aug 2015

I've bought myself an Orion XT10i -- a 10" Dobsonian with a push-to controller. I'm at my parents' place right now, test-driving it under their incredibly dark skies. The first night was mostly spent getting used to it, but the second night I managed to get some good observing time in. I'm going to combine the two nights into one entry.

First impressions: this is a big scope compared with the 8" I have now. It's heavier and bulkier, and is going to take some thinking and work to make it as portable as the 8". But it's nicely made, the controller seems to work well, and once I replaced the RACI finder with my old straight-through, I could actually find things. The movement is okay, but it's still going to take some work. A perfunctory star test looked same inside and out, but I still need to sketch it. Will need to baffle the mirror end, esp when I get back to light pollution. The spring-loaded collimation screws are wonderful, but I wish I didn't get different answers from the collimation cap and the Cheshire I've got. With some practice managed to get warp factor of 0.2, but even bad warp facters (5) seemed useful.

And with that, I got set up for first light! After doing the first alignment, I went right away to the Double-Double. Not sure if it's the scope or just that it's high overhead, but it was a lot easier to split this than with the 8".

M13 was glorious. I might have been able to see the propeller. M92 was utterly charming, even right after M13. I saw what looked like a kind of lazy looping S of in this glob.

M101 was cool to see, but not the "glorious Catherine Wheel of fireworks" that Sue French describes in "Deep Sky Wonders". I saw shadowy hints of structure that might've hinted at spiral arms, but that was it. (And that was over two separate nights.)

M57 was cool to see as always, as was M11. M51 was also pretty, but showed no detectable structure beyond the two components.

M109 and M108 were pretty but seemed formless. Sorta kinda maybe might've seen one eye in M97 but I wouldn't swear to it.

NGC 5985 and 5982 -- lovely, especially for the distance (100 million ly!). Zero sign of NGC 5981, but stats say it's mag 13 so I don't feel so bad.

Saturday night, I went out again. I started out just laying on the grass and looking at the Milky Way overhead, sometimes with binos and sometimes with Mark I naked eye. Amazing. Neat to see early Perseids. Saw what looked like dark nebula right by Deneb.

M13: Tried for propeller again. Maybe hint of it at 200X, but not certain. Still gorgeous.

North American Nebula: took some tracking down, but finally spotted in 18mm with O3 filter by looking for NGC 6997, one of the OCs that are in this. Found Gulf of Mexico w/o filter, and east coat with. Neat, but subtle even w/filter. Not like...

Veil Nebula: First words out of my mouth were "Holy shit, you're kidding me." This is AMAZING. Srsly, I think this may be equal of M42. Found arcs on both sides but not central portions. Whatever...my god, this was incredible to see.

Looked for Blinking Planetary; could not track down. Next.

M33: Wow, actually hints of structure plus easy to find. Double plus, saw NGC 604, a large (1500 ly!) star-forming region in M33. Wow.

M31: WOW. M110 and M32 obvious. Tracked down G1, a glob orbiting M31...DOUBLE wow. Was not able to separate G1 from the two stars it's next too, but was obv. non-stellar.

Alpha Persei: Pretty sure I saw nebulosity in this area, just w/naked eye. Neat.