Last Thursday I finally had my chance to observe from Curacao. The first half of my stay there the Moon was out, and the second half it was mostly cloudy. I was using my ST80, the sky was rather dark at S, not as good at SE, and lousy at E.
First of all, I looked at M104 that was too low in Sweden. It was rather bright and elongated; the bright edge looked "sharp", but I couldn't see the sombrero. Then I looked at two last Messier objects that I hadn't seen: M68 and M83. I logged M68 as "dim" (there was not much more to say), but M83 was magnificent. I could see that it was large and irregular, much more so than M31 and more than M33 (obviously that was a trace of the spiral arms), and had a bright core. I wish I could look at it with bigger aperture... That concluded my Messier survey!
After that I looked at open clusters NGC3766 (that was unremarkable) and the Jewel Box, NGC4755 that I missed during my earlier travel South. This arrowhead is beautiful! Of course I had to look at Alpha Crucis which is surely the most beautiful multiple star in heaven, and Alpha Centauri that was somewhat low above the horizon.
The highlight of the night was NGC5128, bright galaxy with a dust lane. I could see the dust lane with deeply averted vision; I checked the orientation later and it was dead on. The galaxy was followed by Omega Centauri that was huge, looked grainy at 32x and started to resolve at 100x.
By that time Scorpius moved to a darker part of the sky, and I looked at the globulars M80 and M4. The latter was much easier to resolve than Omega Cen - already at 32x. Finally I checked M6 and M7 that I had never seen so high, and headed to the hotel. I also logged a young hare that was very intrigued by my headlights.
Dmitri
First of all, I looked at M104 that was too low in Sweden. It was rather bright and elongated; the bright edge looked "sharp", but I couldn't see the sombrero. Then I looked at two last Messier objects that I hadn't seen: M68 and M83. I logged M68 as "dim" (there was not much more to say), but M83 was magnificent. I could see that it was large and irregular, much more so than M31 and more than M33 (obviously that was a trace of the spiral arms), and had a bright core. I wish I could look at it with bigger aperture... That concluded my Messier survey!
After that I looked at open clusters NGC3766 (that was unremarkable) and the Jewel Box, NGC4755 that I missed during my earlier travel South. This arrowhead is beautiful! Of course I had to look at Alpha Crucis which is surely the most beautiful multiple star in heaven, and Alpha Centauri that was somewhat low above the horizon.
The highlight of the night was NGC5128, bright galaxy with a dust lane. I could see the dust lane with deeply averted vision; I checked the orientation later and it was dead on. The galaxy was followed by Omega Centauri that was huge, looked grainy at 32x and started to resolve at 100x.
By that time Scorpius moved to a darker part of the sky, and I looked at the globulars M80 and M4. The latter was much easier to resolve than Omega Cen - already at 32x. Finally I checked M6 and M7 that I had never seen so high, and headed to the hotel. I also logged a young hare that was very intrigued by my headlights.
Dmitri
