A running notebook kept beside a 203 mm reflector in a class 4 sky — what was visible, what the seeing allowed, and what turned out to be worth the cold.
Conditions logged at the start of each session. Seeing estimated on the Pickering scale, converted to arcseconds; limiting magnitude measured against the Little Dipper.
| Object | Constellation | Mag | Best |
|---|---|---|---|
| M31 Andromeda Galaxy | Andromeda | 3.4 | 23:40 |
| NGC 869 / 884 Double Cluster | Perseus | 4.3 | 00:20 |
| M13 Great Globular Cluster | Hercules | 5.8 | 20:55 |
| M45 Pleiades | Taurus | 1.6 | 01:10 |
| Saturn approaching opposition | Pisces | 0.6 | 01:35 |
| M42 Orion Nebula | Orion | 4.0 | 04:15 |
Times are local, given for transit or for the point where the object clears the neighbour’s roofline — whichever comes later.
Nothing doing before midnight — the roof was still dumping heat and the planet boiled at anything over 120×. Waited it out. By half past one the air settled and the Cassini division held steady across the ansae at 200×, sharp enough to trace most of the way round.
Titan sat well off to the east. Two fainter moons suspected on the other side, but I would not swear to either without a chart.
First genuinely transparent night in three weeks. M31 filled the low-power field and then some — the outer arms run well past the edge at 32×, which never stops being a surprise.
The northern dust lane came through cleanly with averted vision. The second one I am less sure about; it may have been the eyepiece as much as the galaxy. Both companions were easy, M110 noticeably the more diffuse of the pair.
A short session — M13 is already past its best from here and dropping into the murk above the treeline by ten. Resolved to the core at 150× anyway, which says more about the cluster than about the sky.
Packed up early when the transparency collapsed. Worth noting that the whole thing took forty minutes and was still worth doing.
A 203 mm f/6 Newtonian on a manual equatorial mount, collimated more often than it probably needs to be. Eyepieces run 32 mm down to 6 mm, plus a 2× barlow that mostly confirms the seeing is worse than hoped.
No camera. Everything here was seen by eye and written down afterwards, which means the descriptions are honest about what was difficult.