First light with 10" dob..

Date: 4th July 08, Thursday
Observation Time: 11:30pm to 12:52pm (1:20 hrs)
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Seeing was excellent. Heavy light pollution, Red haze in the background.
Instruments: My 10” dob.

Jon loaned me his 10" dob. He mentioned that he is not using it htat frequently and considering my enthu, he offered it to me for a while.

The views in 10" dob are fabulous. with more aperture and 9mm eyepiece, Jupiter was simply fabulous.

Jupiter: Observed at beginning and end of the session, to avg out the seeing conditions. Tried all eyepieces and magnification. 9mm x 2x barlow combo (266x) view was the best. Bright disk... Almost all bands. Upper central one (S) bigger, lower central one (N) smaller and shifted downwards off equator, two more bands on lower side (N). Lower central band had a dark circle at the edge in the center. Upper central dark band on left side (W) has some white saw tooth. and in the same band on the right side there is white circular spot on the upper right corner (NE). some dark spot next to upper band (above central band)on left central and immediately another dark spot at 11pm in next upper band (NW)

4 moons 2 left (W) and 2 right (E). Within an hour, Eastern lower moon shifted from right (E) to left (W) crossing the upper moon. the magnification was so high that all moons look like disks. i never seen moons as disks in my 6" dob.

M8 Lagoon: The nebulosity was almost invisible. Nice cluster in the view. cluster in a shape of crown.. like burger king crown advt... at the center of the crown there is tiny cross. Left side of the crown is some nebulocity.. two stars directly vertical, paralle to crown and are betn nebulosity and crown. another two stars close to each other and at 11 o'clock of the first two brigh stars... this second pair seems to be inside the nebulosity. Exellent view in the thru 25mm x 2x barlow (94x)and 9mm (133x) eyepiece

M20 Triffid: Only the cluster was visible and nebulosity was totally absent. I am not sure if I was looking at correct location. The cluster had nice V shape on the left. In the center had a nice triangle and 7 shape rotated by 90 deg. No nebulousity at all.

M7 Butterfly: found it easily.. shape was easily visible. the bright red star color was absent.. I think its night pollution that killed it. Seems like red whitish background of light pollution in the eyepiece.

M6 Ptolemy: Thought that M6 was easy to catch, but i guess it was too close to horizon.. so just didn't see it.

M22 Globular: Really nice cluster. Around 2 degrees NE from the gamma saggi. wasn;t able to resolve anything at 32mm (38x), but with 16mm and 12mm really nice view.. Infact 9mm (133x) view was excellent. 266x didn't help much. In 9mm almost resolved all stars.. cluster seems ot be devided in 3 parts. Off the center there is group of stars and all others stars are disperesed around it on Left and right side. No colors. 9mm eyepiece almost full in the view.

M28 Globular: NW side of gamma saggi around less than a degree. not able to resolve the stars with any magnification... with higher magnification just lost the cluster. this cluster is really tiny. compared to M22 globular its 1/4th in size. and its brightness seems lighter than M22, but i guess thats because of size.