Sigh.. its so therapeutic to have a night of clear skies after a whole week of rain. So I really enjoyed myself out on one of the clearest nights I've had with my etx90.
M41, M93 and M47 around Canis Major are now becoming easy to locate as I get more familiar with them. I find M47 surprisingly bright and rich, and M93 is for me a very beautiful 'christmas tree' shaped cluster. M46 remains unspectacular as I think my aperture is too small.
I turned to crux and ticked off the jewel box, but I think the Eta Carinae complex is the real gem. Could detect the nebulosity and what seems like a dark vein around Eta C., but the two clusters 3532 and 3293 nearby are really spectacular. 3293 is a small compact group that resolves beautifully while 3532 (which Herchel considered the finest cluster he had ever seen) just fills the field of view with star upon stars, all of even brightness. A dark band lacking stars runs through the cluster and looks like an arrow.
Ending the night, I turn to the Centaurus constellation and Omega Centuri. The stars all being bright and clear, I can really 'see' the huge centaur standing over crux, bow in hand. And Omega Centuri was the brightest I've even seen it. Easily identified as the fuzzy star in my viewfinder, its a bright green patch in my eyepiece. My scope is too small to make out individual stars, but it is so bright that I can actually make out the graininess of the globular cluster.
Only an hour, a small patch of sky, and a few targets (not to mention the irritating street lamp in the way..), but I marvel at each one in turn. Majestic. Magnificent. It's so therapeutic to see stars after a week of rain...
Observation session (14th March)
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Airconvent
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acc wrote:Great report!
Makes me kick myself for being too lazy to drag out my scope...
chris..you had a good night there! Its also clear tonight but as its a working day..can't drag myself out. BTW, curious to know how bright Omega Centauri is on your ETX90. I remember it being very dim even on a clear night in singapore. I think if you stayed till morning, maybe you can see Scorpius as well?
rich
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United Federation of the Planets
Captain, RSS Enterprise NCC1701R
United Federation of the Planets
chris..you had a good night there! Its also clear tonight but as its a working day..can't drag myself out. BTW, curious to know how bright Omega Centauri is on your ETX90. I remember it being very dim even on a clear night in singapore. I think if you stayed till morning, maybe you can see Scorpius as well?
rich
Hi Rich,
Brightness is relative i guess, so its hard to tell you how bright Omega Centauri was to me! But the transparency was excellent that night, and instead of what usually is a faint, fuzzy, grey patch, I observed a distinct green blob with a grainy texture. The faint, barely detectable edge of the glob. reached out to almost double the size of what I usually see. If I could compare it to anything, it looked as bright as the Orion nebula in Michael's C8 on the other more average night at Dempsey, though lacking detail. But then again, its all relative!
Omega Centauri is a naked eye object actually, around magnitude 4 I think, so it is actually pretty bright if clouds and skyglow don't get in the way.
As for Scorpius, I really can't afford to stay up so late...
clear skies,
Chris