💾 Archived View for koyu.space › mrael2_obsv › sessions › 2021 › 2021-09-10.gmi captured on 2022-06-03 at 23:26:28. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Date: 2021-09-10
Time: 9:00 PM - 11:00 PM
Seeing: II - III
Transparency: 7
I viewed Jupiter and Saturn, but the seeing was poor. Plus, I did not collimate the 10" reflector this night out of laziness.
I am pleased with my new Pentax 5 mm eyepiece which provides 250x and a wide field of view. Hand tracking at this magnification is easier as a result.
I glimpsed M31, but I don't remember at what magnification.
Later in the evening I looked at the Ring Nebula (M57). At 250x, M57 suffers a bit in the way that the edges become diffuse. Maybe due to poor seeing, even at 139x the view was not as good as I remember in the past. Yet it was at a good location near the zenith.
The main item of the evening was Caldwell 55 (C55), aka NGC 7009 or the Saturn Nebula.
It is very small, star-like, and hard to locate at low power, but starting at 84x I got the sense of a "fat" star. At 139x and 250x, there is a clear, mostly circular shape to the planetary nebula. There is a hint of an oval shape, but not much at all.
Color is blue-gray at 139x and 250x, but the central star could not be perceived at these powers.
The appearance is mottled at 250x, and this magnification is probably best for detailed observing if the Dobsonian wasn't such a difficult instrument to use due to its hand-tracking.
I really do want motorized tracking in the future despite the hassles that such a system entails.
I would like to observe C55 again with a tracking mount.