EAAS Observing Sept. 6th and Panoptic 35mm

Well, four of us got together last night...Jonathan, Neil, Stevie and myself up at Killylane Reservoir near Larne.
It looked promising to begin with, but by 11pm the sky quality had degraded a fair bit, with a noticeable increase in moisture content.

This was the first time I'd had the scope out in over 3 months, and with a new Panoptic 35mm eyepiece to see its first light, I was itching to get a chance to use it.
With my 16" Dob , it gives me a magnification of about x52.
It's a big hand-grenade of an eyepiece, weighing almost two pounds, and as I love my 27mm Panoptic, I wanted to see how it worked with the F.5 Dob, and how bad the expected coma would be.
The answer was not that bad at all...in fact it was comparable to the 27mm.

I tried it on Jupiter first, but the swimming atmosphere gave only milliseconds of clarity, and when I pushed up to x100 and x 170 it got even mushier.

So, back to my first love....DSOs, globulars and clusters.
And it was absolutely great.
M27 was beautiful, the waist of the Dumbbell was clearly cinched in.
M31 showed discernable dust lanes, and I even started seeing some detail in the elusive Triangulum M33 galaxy for the first time ever, giving Stevie another glimpse at this, his personal nemesis, which he can never find due to its low surface brightness.

As the evening went on I ran through several objects I hadn't looked for before, including the Blue Snowball in Andromeda, NGC 7662, and The NGC 7331 Galaxy in Pegasus which Stevie had found first. I thought that it was somewhat disappointing.
I went back to basics, having a go at M13, which was absolutely beautiful and very well resolved, so i stepped up to about x170 with my Nagler 11mm and it was pretty spectacular, showing incredible detail and the little lines of stars like legs emerging from the sides.
The Double Cluster was amazing. I'd been bowled over several years ago on seeing it with a 12" Dob and a 27mm Panoptic, the sight sending me off down that route that I'm still on today.
What struck me was the brightness emerging from the eyepiece....the combination of the 35mm and the 16" was collecting a substantial amount of light and it was an absolute treat.

As the evening went on I just meandered all over the sky, but conditions weren't great for objects like M57.
One nice addition I hadn't seen before was M71 in Sagitta, which was so dense it was globular-like, and μ Cephei was beautiful too, with its striking colour.
By now Auriga and Taurus were rising, so I'd a brief look at M1 and the three Auriga clusters before realising that my scope was soaking with dew, and the unheated Telrad was becoming inoperable every few moments, so I called it a night at 2.30am, and headed back to Belfast, 25 miles away.
A reasonably good start, and one that showed that the 35mm Panoptic was a good choice indeed, and promises great results in the future with decent skies.
Coma isn't really an issue, and with a couple of extra collimations as things settled I wasn't distracted at all by it. I'll maybe pick up a Paracorr when I'm in the US later this month, just to see if it's worthwhile.

That sounds like a great night Eamonn.
Lets hope we get a few more like it over the winter.
Maybe we'll have clear skies at WSP, it would be great to see the new eyepiece.

Unfortunately I'll not be among the EAAS group there this year, Dave.
I'll be in the USA, and as my trip was delayed i won't be getting back to the 30th now, a week later than originally planned.
Mind you, being an hour away from the Mojave desert might have its benefits, remembering the mist at Birr last year!
I'm sure the rest of our group will give you enough to talk about, and if Stevie brings his 12" Dob down I'll probably lend him my eyepiece anyway.
It'd be nice to see what it's like on your gargantuscopes.

Great Report.

I haven't been out with a scope for a long time. reading the reports posted here over the last few days has whetted the appetite no end.

No probs Eamonn, enjoy the Mojave skies.
Incase you missed it, here is a report for our nights observing over the weekend.
www.irishastronomy.org/forum?func=view&catid=11&id=72613#72613

It had been so long since I set up the scope, I had to sit back for a min. and think about how it worked :ohmy:

Me too!
I set it up and knew something was wrong.
I forgot to stick the Telrad on...doh!

However, what the break did was made me appreciate the scope. I find that when you're using it regularly (like that ever happens here!) you tend to concentrate more on the shortcomings and forget just how good it can be.
I spent time just cruising the Milky Way, looking through Cassiopeia and Cygnus, chancing on faint fuzzies every couple of fields, and basically just enjoying the view.
I read the report, Dave, and you've given me the impetus to have a go at the North American nebula.
Coincidentally I love looking at that red star between the two parts of the Double Cluster too!!!

However, the downside of a 16" Lightbridge is the back-breaking labour of getting it in and out of the car. When I wakened on Sunday my back knew I'd been out the night before.