Fuzzies Everywhere - I

Date: May 15th 2010 Saturday
Observation Time: 8:00pm to 12:30pm (4.5hrs),
Location: Jon's Home, Boulevard, CA
Weather: Excellent.. no clouds.. no winds.. probably best night till now in 2010. seeing was lil bad 8/10.. transparency 9/10
Instruments: Jon's 16" dob, my 10" dob, np101 APO.
Buddies: Jon


Venus - telescope not cooled down yet.. pretty bad view from my 10" or jon's 16" scope.. blurry..

Moon - few degrees west from venus.. second day phase of moon.. really slick.. excellent view of venus-moon pair as the darkness evolved.

Saturn - excellent view from 16".. jon's scope more stable than mine.. ring, shadow of the ring.. lil gaseous pattern on the disk, 3 moons on right.. in my 10" scope, 7mm image was good.. but barlowed 7mm really blurry..

Castor - easy split with my scope. 4.7 arcmins is indeed easy to split.

Izar - Indeed interesting. companion is in a diffraction ring of primary star. from APO NP101, its a marvelous view. with my 10" scope, can see it, but not as sharp and clean as the apo.

Gamma Leo - Easy split. Companion seems smaller than Primary.

Porrima - Indeed hard.. higher magnification thru Join's 16".. don't remember how much. Its not an easy split. I am able to manage it with my scope. with 7mm ep i.e. 171x (i guess)

M44 - Beehive thru my 10" 35mm pan @ 35x.. looks marvelous. Are there any doubles in here???

M3 - Lost a track to locate this one. Not sure why it happens. Excellent view. Darker the sky better view..

-- Hot chocolate break --

Virgo All messiers: After last week's vrgo browsing, I have gained some confidence in how to browse through fuzzies in this area. In fact last time i missed few nearby messiers.. with smaller 10" scope + 35 Pan @ 35x, shows whole area clearly. should observe this when it real dark and calm, to see more fuzzies at such a low magnification. I was expecting lil better view in my scope, probably lower mag didn't show much. Still can clearly see lot of messiers and ngc objects too in markarains chain.

6 Com star-M98-M99-M100-Markarains chain with M84-M86-4388-4387-4402-Eyes4438-4435-4461-4473. Also M88 and M91 were clearly visible because of low mags. I missed these two las time. Again, M87-M89-M90 visible. On eastern side, M58-M59-M60 were also visible. Lil down M49 was an easy catch. I also mentioned to Jon abt missing M61 (New).. both of us located it and looked at it together. Easier to locate.. Jon noticed few NGCs nearby too..

Did I miss M85, which lil above M100 ??? Hmmm...

Continued..