Friday, 8 April. 2230-0030
A cold cloudy day fined up during the evening and the sky was too clear to pass up, so another few hours on the front step was called for.
The transparency and seeing were great, I'd say about a 8/10 for both.
The obvious first target for the night was Jupiter. At its highest point on the ecliptic in the North at the time. These are some of the best views of Jupiter I have ever enjoyed, tonight the air was clear enough that the image in the 6mm ep was nice and still. There was no GRS visible, but I could easily make out four bands across the face of the planet - one smaller and one larger in the North and South hemispheres. As always the planet and moons make a spectacular image - tonight two on the left in close and two on the right out further, at about a 30 degree tilt.
I had a quick look around Leo for M95, M96, M105, M65 and M66 but couldn't find anything standing out easily so I'll park those as targets for the Dark Sky night planned for May.
Took a moment to check the collimation of Dobby by pushing the focus way out while looking at a star - the dark circle of the secondary within the blur of the primary mirror looked about dead centre so I'm thinking that it is fine. The blur of the primary mirror seems to show some marks that could do with a clean.
Mars was next, as it stood out so clearly in the Eastern sky. The 17mm ep showed a bright orange disk, but no detail was evident. I then tried the 6mm ep and in the moments of stillness there seemed to be some shadows on the disk that hinted at surface detail. Awesome. No white on the poles evident, but I think they are small at the moment due to it being summer in the facing hemisphere.
Tried some of the filters; numbers #21, #12, #58A didn't do much other than alter the colour. #80A made it worse, losing what detail there was, and #25 is way too red. #56 turned the image green, but did seem to bring out a little more detail.
Hey, what is that brighter star a bit further down? OH! That's Saturn! I forgot that was going to be there. What a beautiful view! The 6mm ep gave an amazing view when the air settled down. Although no bands are visible, the rings look fantastic and I love being able to see the dark line on the right of the image as the shadow of the planet falls across the ring where it goes behind the disc. There was a faint line visible on the left of the rings that may have been the Casini division, but it was not that clear tonight.
The final target for the night was M4, selected on the basis of being close by in Scorpio to where I was already looking at Mars and Saturn. Another chance to work on my star-hopping skills, I did a bit of research out on the step on my phone checking out GoogleSky and FreeCharts.com to find the right series of stars. It turned out to be quite dim in tonights sky, but I could make out the central bar structure as described in the star maps. I found it first in my 30mm ep as a small faint group of stars, and then I zoomed in progressively with the 17mm, 13mm and 6mm eps. All were still faint, but I could resolve the cluster of stars and the structure. The 13mm seemed the best balance of seeing the whole cluster and best brightness.
It was getting colder, so I went inside finally at about 12:30am.
