More Autumnal Haze

7-8 September 2021, 22:30 – 00:30 (BST)

Seeing: Poor / Average

Transparency: Poor

Conditions: Similar to the previous night; warm and hazy, with a hint of a low-lying mist. Unusually, despite there being no condensation on the scope, the pages of my notebook became very soft and difficult to write on by the end of the session. Even the pages of the PSA had lost their usual sturdiness.

Once again, the poor transparency left me scratching around for things to observe, but I started out with a look at Saturn at 171x, with Titan and a couple of the other moons showing well.

M52 was visible in 7x50 binoculars as a misty, grainy patch of light. The view in the 9x50 finder was similar, but I could more easily see the fan shape and the 8th magnitude star at its apex.

Nova Cas 2021 seems to be slowly brightening again at approximately 7th magnitude.

A test of different filters and magnifications on the Bubble Nebula proved inconclusive because of the poor conditions. Need to try again on a better night.

That was followed by an ambitious attempt to look at some galaxies.

NGC 7331, galaxy, Pegasus

171x. As per previous observations. Only the core region was showing up well tonight. Stellar nucleus visible with averted vision. I did nudge the scope southwest towards the Stephan’s Quintet area, but there wasn’t even a hint of the fuzziness I've seen before.

NGC 7479 wasn’t visible tonight (at both 171x and 133x).

I kept pushing the scope south to look for Neptune. The chart showed some more galaxies en route (including NGC 7556 in Pisces), but I couldn’t see any of them. However there was a consolation prize in the bright, red-hued carbon star TX (19) Piscium, which looked like a glowing coal at 133x. It showed well in the finder too. Possibly the highlight of the night.

Neptune itself was smeared out and mushy because of the poor seeing. I had made a note of where Triton was supposed to be, and at one point I thought I caught a glimpse of it, but I was unable to repeat the observation, so that has to go down as a non-detection.

Jupiter (at 240x) was perhaps the only thing that benefited from the haze, as it seemed to improve the contrast on the cloud belts. Unfortunately the seeing was only intermittently good (and otherwise mostly poor). Ganymede and Callisto were close together.

Nature note:

Two large frogs in the pond and several smaller ones queuing up on the exit log (I suppose you could call it a frog-jam).