). It was a night not to be wasted !The entire sky was very clear when we arrived. Canis Major, Orion, Auriga, parts of Carina and Puppis and a few other easily recognizable constellations could be seen in their entirety (Singapore standard). However, barely an hour into our session, huge clouds came in from the East and covered most of the sky !
We were left with Jupiter, Saturn, M41 and M42 (i.e the "usual stuff") for the next hour through the occasional gaps in the clouds. Jupiter was at a nice height (and very bright !) while we were there and a lot of surface detail could be observed. For example, instead of seeing the usual 4 pretty obvious bands (2 equatorial, 2 polar), we could see numerous fine, thin lines (banding) near the northern polar region.Zong Yao and I stayed on after the rest left, and we were rewarded with almost an hour's worth of totally cloud free skies from 12am. With the clouds gone from the area, the Southern sky began to come alive with all it's Southern treasures. Other than a rising Centaurus and Crux, we could also see everything between Crux, the false cross and all the way to a setting Canis Major and Orion in the West. Without wasting any time, we went on to observe The Jewel Box Cluster, Omega Centauri, the Eta Carina Nebula region, NGC 3532 and NGC 3293. We noted that NGC 3293 appeared to have a nice visual 3D effect through the 24mm Panoptic. Those observing NGC 3293 next time should look hard at this cluster too, to see if you can experience the same 3D effect like we did. We used a magnification of ~ 40x.
2 "first-time" objects for the MN56 observed this evening since it's arrival were :
M93 - an open cluster in Puppis, almost triangular in shape resembling the Jewel Box Cluster but richer.
M68 - This is supposed to be one of the known, richly packed globular clusters in the sky. But maybe because of the lights in Toa Payoh, we had a hard time looking for it. A lot of time was spent searching for it ... comparing views through the 50mm finder, the eyepiece and through the red dot finder. Finally, after some trial and error, Zong Yao managed to nail it through the 24mm Pan. It was really faint. You had to jiggle and move the scope a little to confirm it was there.
By 1am, and after one final look at NGC 3532, we packed up and headed home. The next time I'm there, I plan to do all the open clusters in the Crux region.
Here are a couple of pictures captured from yesterday to add some colour to the post
:Observing M42 in the West
Observing Jupiter in the East
Clear skies,
