I spent about 3 hours observing from my backyard (Steelton, Pa). Transparency was fair, with ocassional streaks of high cirrus. NELM was about 3.8. The seeing was quite variable, but fair to good above 45* altitude.
The 15 inch Phantom Obsession did its best to provide pleasing views of brighter NGCs and Messiers. It was also a substantial aid to finding some of the objects (thanks to AN), as stars to hop from were few and far between.
Galaxies take a real beating on nights like this. M31 was similar to views through my 80mm SV Nighthawk refractor on a fair night at DS-4. NGC 185 and NGC 147 were 'no-shows'.
Star clusters and strongly condensed planetaries suffer far less. Some 'good' views (with a photon drought now extending for several months, these are 'desperate' times) were had of these. The view of M15 was particularly nice, with a strongly condensed core and faint overlay of stars at 72x, and well resolved core at 216x. The open cluster M29 usually appears underwhelming. On good nights, it simply does not stand out as a cluster due to its location in the bright Cygnus star cloud. Last night it looked surprisingly impressive as it stood out from the very faint Milky Way background.
Overall, it felt good to spend some time under the night sky.
Clear Skies,
Bob P.
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Re: Brief Observing Report for Sunday Night
Bob,
I went to Naylor last night to attempt to observe an unusual mutual event, Europa annularly transiting Io, while Io was in eclipse. It was the night of the October public observing session. A large crowd had shown up but most of the visitors had already departed before I arrived.
The transparency was mediocre but I was still able to view a number of celestial chestnuts using the 17" classical Cassegrain at 162 and 259x, for the most part. They included M52, NGC 7789, M103, NGC 225, Gamma Andromedae, M31, M15, M2, M57, M56, Struve 2470-74, Albireo, Omicron Cygni, the asterism known as Vultus Irrisorie through the 5" finder, 61 Cygni, Delta Cygni, M29, NGC 7027, NGC 7008, and NGC 6826. I gave NGC 891 a shot but I wasn't able to see it, which was no surprise given the conditions.
Io was invisible during the mutual event, as expected, but I did see it go into occultation hours earlier and emerge from eclipse less than an hour later.
Dave Mitsky
De gustibus non est disputandum.