Astronomy

An easy find as ever, the wide FOV of the 30mm 2" eyepiece provided a lovely view of the central bulge of the galaxy. The stars around it were better defined than the previous observation and with averted vision a more expansive swathe of faint light could be seen extending out across the FoV.

A compact Globular Cluster located not far away from the star Enif at the end of one of Pegasus' feet. At low magnitude with the 30mm eyepiece in this was only visible as a fuzzy path. Only by increasing the magnitude to x60 with the 10mm Plossl did the cluster occupy a decent proportion of the FoV. At all magnitudes though this is a lovely stellar sight with the hint of much more detail in the background as well as a compact array of brightish stars.

Using the finder chart provided on the Sky and Telescope website Uranus was a fairly easy to target to locate, despite being close to the trees and therefore behind a thick atmosphere. A triangle of lights were located with Uranus appearing to my eyes slightly blue. On increasing the magnitude using progressively the 25mm Plossl (x24), then the 10mm Plossl (x60) it was a simple matter to confirm this was disc rather than point of light. A small blue-tinted disc presented itself at x120 with the 2x Barlow used with the 10mm Plossl.

Astronomy Now this month suggested a tour through the sights of Perseus so I headed over this way next. My first stop was the pleasantly compact cluster M34, not far away from Algol. With the sky fairly bright the lesser stars were not visible but this large cluster still was a pleasant sight, nicely framed at x24 and with a hint of dimmer stars at x60.

A pleasing double comprising of a bright golden primary star and a much fainter blue secondary. The secondary was detectable at x20 given there is a significant separation. This was made much clearer at x120 with the secondary some distance from the primary.

A very difficult object to track down given the murkyness of the sky. At x20 there was the faintest hint of a fuzz in the right location. Increasing magnitude brought less need for averted vision to dected an elongated nebulous region but there was no great definition to the lobes of this compact nebula.