M56 GC failed from City lights

 

Date: July 27th 2026, Monday
Observation Time: 9:30pm to 10:30pm (observing time ~1hr), 
Location: SC Home
Weather: clear Skies, but heavy light pollution because of street light & moon white-wash 
Instruments: Astrotech 102ED APO  

On South side (right), moon is shining bright in gibbous phase 2 days shy of full phase. On North left side bright white street light has caused white wash. So I am hiding away behind patio wall. That's the whole city light pollution. 

Fantastic star hopping from Alberio towards M56 GC up north within 7deg FoV i.e. 2 jumps in 35pan eyepiece. Stellerium app helped in this. Decent map with not too many stars at this 20x mag helped well. But was never able to see the GC or even the faintest idea. If Ring nebula of Mag8 was visible, why not GC of Mag8..not really sure. Need to watch this without moon whitewash, then will have better judgement.

Showed moon to Rohit and family. Since now we are only 1 day away from full moon, not much to see at the edge of the moon. 

In the end, some laser show for satellight tracking in the sky with Dhruv and Rohit. Revived the laser after long time. 

That's possibly the last session for next 3 weeks, as heading to EU trip to A & B. Ciao! 

 

M57 Ring Nebula in City lights

 

Date: July 26th 2026, Sunday
Observation Time: 9:30pm to 11pm (observing time ~1.5hrs), 
Location: SC Home
Weather: clear Skies, but heavy light pollution because of street light & moon white-wash 
Instruments: Astrotech 102ED APO  

9:30pm. Watching towards East. On South side (right), moon is shining bright in gibbous phase 2 days shy of full phase. On North left side bright white street light has caused white wash. So I am hiding away behind patio wall. That's the whole city light pollution. 

Just for fun was browsing Zenith sky near Vega and Alberio, 

Alberio was fantastic & crisp. Even Aparna clearly saw the split, orange-blue colors in default 20x. 

From there, kept on browsing the sky upward North towards Lyra in 20x with 35mm Pan. During Houge park, telescope showed the ring nebula nicely, so I just wanted to see how it looks thru my scope from city lights. Alberio to Sulafat and the line of parallelogram. I can clearly see a faint object at mid-center. Bingo. Even in so much light pollution its visible Mag-8 object. 42x Nag17 shows it clearly. Even Dhruv was able to see the dark ring, when I explained it to him. Tried UHC filter on it. Slightly brighter (but it may be psychological perspective)

Overall it's impressive what you can see. If moon and street light can be fully avoided, I am sure it will pop up nicely. 

Moon: Later switched it to moon. Dhruv enjoyed it quite a lot. Also lot of Q&A on moon geology.

 

     

Astrotech 102 ED observation specs

AstroTech 102 ED specs and eyepiece combos data

Detailed review from Jon: https://www.cloudynights.com/articles/user-reviews/telescopes/100mm-110mm-refractors/astro-tech-at102ed-r1690/

All details in spreadsheet here: 

Specs: 

Aperture: 102mm

Focal length: 709mm

F-ratio: 6.95 i.e. ~F/7

Weight 9.6lbs

Magnifications with my eyepieces: 

35mm Pan:  20x

26mm E-lux: 26x

17mm Nagler: 42x

10mm X-cel: 70x

7mm Nagler: 101x

4mm TMB: 177x

Rebooting..

Date: July 24th 2026, Friday
Observation Time: 9pm to 10:30pm (observing time ~1.5hrs), 
Location: SC Home
Weather: clear Skies, but heavy light pollution because of street lights.  
Instruments: Astrotech 102ED APO  

Trying to reboot myself after a long time. It's been 8 years (i.e. SD to SC move) since I did star gazing. Workplace has kept me so interested and busy that I didn't even bother to even watch moon thru my scope. But since last week, I am trying to get back in the game. 

Last week, visited Houge park for SJAA - In town star party. It was a good reboot. 4-5 scopes. Couple of them on Alberio, Venus. Coupel of photography gears pointing to Veil nebula, Whirlpool galaxy (M??). There was 1 scope pointing to M57 rung nebula. This was was a fantastic view. Digital lives photography but view thru the eyepiece. Something unique indeed. 

So today opened my APO 102ED scope. Goal was just get familiar with the instrument and browse the "light polluted" sky. 

Moon: Fabulous view. Crate details clearly visible. Tried 35mm panoptic, 17 Nagler, 7 Nagler and 7x 2xBarlow magnifier. Views in 17 Nagler were the best. higher magnification was hard to focus. Seeing might not be good. Even with 17 Nagler, crater edges were clearly visible. Also the mountain peak at the center of the crater was visible thru 7mm. Though I know geographical map, forgot the names of most the craters and mares. Looking at the map on the phone also confused me in the orientation because of telescopic view vs digital map on the phone. Need to find a good map/app that matches APO/diagonal image alignment. Showed this to Aparna as well. She was quite impressed. 

Vega and Epsilon Lyrae double-double: in 35mm, Vega was crisp. some stars around Vega confused me with double double. Then realized that they are on opposite side of Epsilon lyre, so moved to opposite side of Vega to find empisolon. Can clearly see "double"... higher magnification didn't help resolving double to double-double. It was ay up in the sky close to home roof. So image was wavy and wasn't able to focus. Also eyepiece holder / diagonal doesn't stay at one place because of gravity and had to hold it by hand to get image in focus. Bit of a trouble. Overall, failed.

Alberio: Took lil bit time to locate it because of light pollution and without the finder scope. browsing thru 35mm, finally found it. Beautiful and crisp. 17mm and 7mm nailers did well as well. Crisp image and sharp focus. Orange/yellow bigger star with blue/greenish smaller star.. Higher the mag, the color contrast goes dimmer. So watching in lower mag was good. 

Since not much visible in the light-polluted sky, tried to browse thru Sagittarius thru 35mm. Not having finder scope or binocs was not healthy. Wasn't even sure if I was browsing thru Sagi or Opphicus, Scorpio. Possibly saw some big open cluster in 35mm. Not sure what it is. Overall, failed

I think in light polluted sky, it's good to have the intelliscope, so at least locations where telescope is pointed at is clear so its easier to locate things, when not visible to naked eye. 

Any way, overall a good reboot! Btw, I noticed that I had tried to reboot myself in 2020, but didn't publish the blog post or didn't capture the details. Hopefully, this time I can continue my observing bit in a regular cadence. GN!