Summertime! (Yay!)

[Nightspore]

 

I’ve had an early taste of summer. It was a warm night on the 10th of May. I was all set up at 00:30 BST. The jet stream wasn’t horrendous but there was still a slight haze. I’d decided on the Nagler Zoom, a 19mm Panoptic and a 9mm Nagler T6. The T6 gave me 46.7x with a 1.55mm exit pupil and 1° 45’ 25” TFOV (I’ve always thought around a 1.5mm exit pupil was very effective on a small refractor).

 

 

The Panoptic was my low power EP at 22.1x, a generous 3.2mm exit pupil, and about 3 arc degrees of TFOV. I’ve had to accept that one scope just can’t do it all. The 60EDF with 2” accessories can give a low power/wide exit pupil.

 

 

But, with the AZ5 the Titchy Sixty is quite difficult for me to handle. Way too much weight in back. Hence why I took out the 72ED, my most used scope of all time. When set-up correctly I can loosen the AZ5 clutches totally and the OTA is balanced perfectly held only by slight friction.

 

 

As Leo slowly set I managed to split Gamma 1 Leonis with the zoom and the T6. I later went on to split Cor Caroli, Delta Serpentis, Porrima and Zeta Bootis. I knew the Summer Triangle would be visible in the east. I couldn’t see it for looking though. Kinda tells you about the conditions. Until, I did see it, in all its magnificence! "Sumer is icumen in" if you’re into Middle English. The Double Double was a no brainer. I found M57 with the Nagler zoom but it was more obvious with the 9mm Nagler. It made my night. I couldn’t find M27 but did find Collinder 339/Coathanger. Albireo was cool as well. I couldn’t resist M13 and M92 at a 1.5mm exit with the T6 either. I don’t know why but the Hercules globular clusters look great at this exit pupil (almost 50x with the 72). I thought I could see individual stars twinkling on the globular at one stage. This can take some concentration with a small scope however. Either way, session six this year seemed to coincide with summer actually starting. Yay for summertime!