Had an excellent off-site observing session last night with the 12-inch LX200GPS. Unfortunately only one of my observing buddies joined me but we still had a great time.
The skies were quite dark, there was enough contrast to see bright Zodiacal Light prominent after sunset for a while. I brought my Sky Quality meter out and measured a very nice background brightness of only 21.41 magnitudes per square arcsecond. That's fully 2 magnitudes dimmer than a typical night at Xanadu Observatory!
The Milky Way was bright and I spent a fair amount of time simply lounging in the chair and looking up. It was rather cold, by late evening the temperature dipped below freezing.
Here's a brief rundown of some of the observed objects:
-Capella and Alpheratz (alignment stars, tonight I set up in Alt-Az mode).
-M31 Andromeda Galaxy. An excellent view at 110x, dust lanes prominent and the nucleus was super bright.
-Mars. Surface markings were evident. Tried to image in the LPI but, although results were better than last time, the focus was off and I won't bother posting here.
-M45 Pleiades. Tons of nebulosity visible around the member stars at 100x.
-NGC 869 & NGC 864 Double Cluster. A stunning view at 100x, there were so many stars visible that it almost seemed like one continuous cluster.
-M42 Orion Nebula. One of the best views of M42 that I've had recently, awesome mottling in the nebula and six stars resolved in Trapezium even at low power 100x.
-M33 Pinwheel Galaxy. Spiral arms faint but visible, was getting low towards the West but still a very nice face-on galaxy view.
-Saturn. An excellent view with several moons nearby. Saturn will be at opposition in about a week and it looked amazing tonight. The picture above was taken with the Meade LPI and a Celestron 2x Barlow in the 12". Although it's still not an excellent picture I'm pleased with it.
-M81 & M82. This galaxy pair in Ursa Major was still low on the horizon when we observed them, but they are quite bright and were an impressive view at 100x. Could have gone higher in power but my fingers were too cold.
It was nice to get out under the stars at a darker site and escape the routine. We packed up and left just about the time of moonrise.
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