Observation Log – August 9, 2010
Date: 8/9/2010
Time: 8:45 PM – 10:30 PM EDT
Scope: Stellarvue SV80BV FL: 750mm
Eye Pieces: 22 Panoptic, 9mm Nagler, 7mm Nagler
Mount: Stellarvue M1 Alt-Az
Location: Backyard, Suffolk, VA
Weather: Warm, passing clouds, breezy early – then still.
Seeing: 7 Transparency: 4
Moon: None
Not the best conditions for observing – lots of passing clouds but the seeing was a bit better than it has been. Star images were steady at 107x (7mm Nagler). I used Venus to get the finder and scope aligned. Venus, Saturn, and Mars were all visible just after sunset but they disappeared behind the tree line pretty quickly.
While waiting for it to get a bit darker I focused on Albireo and easily split the bright yellow and blue double with the 9mm Nagler. This is a very pretty double and I enjoy looking at it.
Messier 29 (M29) – Found the cluster with the finder and then with the 9mm. Both the 9mm and the 22mm showed the 6 brightest stars. The 9mm revealed 2 more faint star and the 7mm brought out 2 more. Below is a sketch. I spent a fair bit of time on this one trying to get a sketch that represented what I seeing in the eye piece.
I inverted the original sketch and cleaned up the stars a bit using Gimp.
Messier 71 (M71) – I am still not able to find this with the SV80. Will try again another night using the 8″ SCT. I am sure I am in the right place, but I was not able to resolve the globular.
Messier 39 (M39) – I did not have much luck finding this one either. The clouds were thicker and I was not able to find my reference stars. After a few minutes of searching I thought that I may have finally got it in my eyepiece but I am not 100% sure. I should be able to find this with this scope so it will be a target on another night.
Messier 13 (M13) – Since I was having trouble locating the other targets on my plan I decided to point the scope towards something a bit brighter – M13 the Great Cluster in Hercules. It was easy to find nearly directly overhead. The bright core was easy to see with the 22mm Pan and the 9mm Nagler. The 9mm showed a few details of individual stars and with the 7mm I was able to resolve a few more individual stars closer to the core.
