It’s been some time since I’ve been out with the ST120 so with a forecast for clear skies last night I decided to have a change and moved it outside to cool down. Unfortunately the weather didn’t live up to its billing and whilst there were regular patches of clear sky there were also regular drifts of cloud. I was keen not to write the evening off entirely however. Top of my list of targets — mainly Messier objects I’d not managed to find last winter — was M50. That seemed like the best choice to try as I planned to find it by a short star-hop up from Sirius.
I used the RDF to locate Sirius and then with a 32mm eyepiece hopped north to find a small triangle of stars including 11 CMa. A little further north and east took me to Theta CMa whose intense red colour was obvious compared to the stars around it. North of Theta CMa is another triangle of stars of about 6.5 magnitude. That triangle points north, just to the west of M50 which came into view as I moved the scope in that direction.
I have to admit that in 32mm and 25mm eyepieces M50 didn’t look exactly overwhelming and even at 60x magnification with a 10mm eyepiece it was indistinct and the stars wouldn’t resolve clearly as a result of the cloud. There was a definite “fuzz” around the brighter stars where others would had been visible had the sky been more clear. Now I’ve found it I think this will be one to revisit when the seeing is better.
Virgo was near fully-risen at this point and my next target was M61, but even Mars (currently in Virgo) wasn’t visible because of the cloud so happy with finding my 70th Messier object I decided to call it a night there. Clear skies are still forecast for the small hours of the morning of the 28th so I’ll see if I can do better then.