The sky was very clear yesterday (08 Dec 2005) and Clement and Elton call me out for a short observation session in Changi. We arrived at one of the car park in Changi at around 10pm. I brought my refractor along to mount on Clement GP mount with Sky-Sensor 2000 and Elton bring his Teleport for some "star bath". The car park is very convenient, but it's surrounding is just too bright... not a big issue, since we only plan for a short observation session.
After a quick three star alignment (Mars was one of them) with Sky-Sensor 2000, I went for our first target... M42 and M43. As usual, it didn't disappoint us... "wow" ("WOW" in Elton's Teleport
) was the word to describe it. We went for the Moon after it and hmm... it seem a long time ago that we actually took a good look at the moon and the view was also fantastic... all the craters, mountain ranges, valleys and etc stand out beautifully... I decided to try one of the difficult object to see in Singapore... M1 Crab Nebula. I hit the GOTO and I was shock (
) to see that the Nebula was visible in my 120 refractor... not very obvious, but it there. 
I think it'll be even more obvious if we was in a dark site. Anyway, I finally got a view on Crab Nebula in Singapore.... Anyway, below is what we saw last night:
1. Moon,
2. M1,
3. M31,
4. M35,
5. M36,
6. M37,
7. M38,
8. M41,
9. M42,
10.M43,
11. M44,
12. M46,
13. M47,
14. M78,
15. M93,
16. IC418,
17. NGC 2392 (Eskimo Nebula) - A very nice planetary nebula... look like a star with "hair" ha ha ha
, 18. NGC 2438 - the planetary nebula in M46,
and anymore?? Can't remember.
Anyway, we decided to call it a night (or morning??
) at 2am and to end the observation, we look at Saturn... Althought Saturn was still quite low and turbulence was clearly affecting the view, but we still can't help, but "WOW"... especially the view through Elton's Teleport... the belts is clearly seen and well defined... this is what I call a "photographic" view!!! Below is some comments on the equipments:
1. Elton's Teleport: Stable, easy to use and the view through it is just "WOW"... it just a fantastic visual scope... Hope he'll keep the scope and I think Elton will have difficulty to find another better scope in term of design, portablilty and optics... unless he get a bigger Teleport... got my hint... ha ha ha
2. My 120 Achromat Refractor: Not perfect, but better than I thought...
3. Clement Sky-Sensor 2000: Still the best GOTO I had used (sorry Autostar, Nextar and Sphinx)... easy to use, alignment is easy... basically can use any objects in it database as an alignment object and won't stop you from observing even alignment is not done and don't need to re-do your alignment again if power fail... just put back on the power and tell it to used back the previous alignment data. Ok, the slewing was not that fast, but what can you said when it can GOTO 130++ features on just the Moon.
Sky-Sensor 2000 virus attack again!!! Have a nice day.
