Jupiter, at last! (And oh, Messier 31 and Messier 42)

The weather was OK today, so I had to do some observations – this might have been my first "proper" deep-sky session. So far I my only "proper" observations were of the Moon, Saturn and the Pleiades. Some time ago I got some first (and suboptimal) glances at M31, M13 with my 70mm refractor, and of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury by naked eye, and recently first glances of Jupiter with two scopes.

But today I used the 5.9-inch Newton scope for my first "proper" session of M31, M45, M42 and then Jupiter – though first I took some wide-angle images, with the 400D and the 10-22mm lens, at 10mm, f/4, ISO1600 and over 1 minute exposure – just to do some long-exposure photography again after a long hiatus.

The house of our friendly yet annoying neighbour… Light pollution to the left came from a sports-ground – they later switched off their flood lights.

My small slice of the milky way – and some undefined orangeish streak (probably clouds illuminated by our beautiful high-pressure-sodium lights). I intentionally photographed the airplane passing through the photo.

First I observed the Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31) while it was at about 40° altitude. Frankly, I'm still a bit underwhelmed by M31 in my 5.9-inch (150/750) scope – yes, it is noticebly brighter than in my 70mm refractor (and I am not experienced, and not properly dark adapted), but still… Lacking a light-pollution filter, I tried the poor man's substitute: color filters. I tried blue and green filters, and they increase contrast (and make the periphery discernable), but obviously they make the whole image darker. I tried the 40mm, the 30mm, the 25mm and the 20mm (all Plössls). Still undecided whether color filters are recommendable as a cheap light-pollution filter.

Later on I observed M31 as it was almost in the zenith, and I was under the impression that the image was slightly better.

Regarding the Orbinar 40mm and 30mm Plössls I must notice that the eye-relief is too long, the eye position is critical (kidney-beaning) and the lack of an eye-cup is sorely noted.

I then shortly moved on to the Pleiades (Messier 45). The "tail" was visible to me, but the "last two" stars only barely (TYC 1800-1783-1 with magnitude 10.12 and TYC 1800-1804-1 with magnitude 10.32).

Later on Orion became visible and I had to check out the Orion nebula (Messier 42). It was more impressive than M31, but still it lacked the "Awwwh!" moment that seeing Saturn's rings for the first gave to me.

As a last observation I waited for Jupiter to clear some roofs here. It was a much superior view of Jupiter compared to my past encounters – I have finally "really" seen Jupiter. Well, not "really" actually but the two dark equatorial bands I saw were an improvement. (And little Io was there close to Jupiter, Ganymede on his side, Europa and Callisto on the other side)

Now my muscles hurt and I had to stop. It was a bit too much cramped into one session for me with my health problems – but the weather was good and I don't know when I will get the next chance (yeah, someone give a house in the south of France, please?!?).

I must admit: I'm a sucker for eye-candy, for high-contrast images that are bright enough – oh well. The craters of the Moon, or Saturn's rings, that is my catnip – and even the Jupiter's limb. But Jupiter's bands? Oh, well, I've seen two of them now. I guess seeing wasn't that good, and the scope maybe was not good as well, and I lack the experience, but compared to the high-contrast views this is visually a bit lacking. I'll see if I can squeeze some better views out this scope.

And I need to remind myself of the wonder of what I'm seeing.