Hi, here is observing report from this Saturday.
Conditions were excellent tonight, so I went observing.
I was using 16" f1/4.3 dobsonien, 24mm Panoptic, 11 mm Nagler and some filters.
24mm panoptic gives 71x magnification with 1 degree field of view.
11 mm Nagler gives 156 magnification and 0.5 degree FOV.
It was bright in Galway for entire day, so I expected very good night. But fog started forming around 5pm and it did not improved until 9pm when I was heading. Luckily my usual observing place was clear (beach west from Galway). By 9:30 I was on spot, and in 15 minutes latter I started observing.
I started with Veil Nebula in Cygnus. OIII filter was too narrow, so I switched to UHC. Western and Eastern Veils very both clearly visible with many details. With Panoptic I could see big part of Veil, but I had to use higher magnification to boost contrast and resolve more details. At one place I counted three filaments next to each other.
I tried North America and Pelican without success. Both very visible in binoculars with UHC filter, but are too large for dobsonien. I quickly check M57, but it was too low.
I spend about 40 minutes on M31 Galaxy which was just in zenith. I could not resolve peripheral regions of galaxy from background. There was dark belt passing around bright core, and dark belt was resolvable even 3 degrees from core. There were some details in core, but I had no map to identify it. I had not seen M31 like this for many years, since trip to La Palma.
I moved to Cepheus: NGC 6946 Galaxy and some open-clusters, I could not see nebula in IC 1396. After that I observed a few galaxies in Pegasus and M15 open cluster. After that I moved to open clusters in Cassiopeia and Perseus. Double cluster in Perseus is one of best objects for my dobsonian, as both parts fits into 24 mm Panoptic.
Around 10:30pm my observation was rudely interrupted by high altitude cirrus clouds. So I moved to Jupiter where it does not matter. Seeing was not great, but I could resolve 5 cloud belts and 2 spots, GRS was not visible this time. After 30 minutes clouds passed.
I spend some time on Crab Nebula, but I could not resolve much details. After that condensation started rapidly, mirrors were fine as usually, and I kept eyepieces in warm pocket But I could not use reddot finder (I have laser as backup) and had to swap eyepieces every 2 minutes. I spend last 20 minutes on Orion Sword Nebula and around 11:30 started packing.
At night I usually wear reflection jacket, in dark it looks bit like uniform. When I was packing two boy racers showed up, but turned around as soon as they saw me.
I would say it was very good night.
  