Last night, Jimi Lowrey and I attempted to observe Hany's Voorwerp in Leo Minor. Jimi is very familiar with this object, having viewed it before in his scope, so we were curious if this object was obtainable in my 30" scope. Jimi brought his collection of Zeiss and TMB super monocentric eye pieces and a Sloan G filter to assist in the effort, and had a printout of the object's location in the star field for reference.

We knew this would be as tough catch, so we observed various planetaries for about an hour to get completely dark adapted and to wait for good sky placement of the object. Sky conditions were generally good, with transparency about 7 (of 10) and seeing about 5 (of 10). At about 10:30 PM, we slewed the scope to the LEDA 165538 galaxy and started the effort. The scope was at about 75 degrees altitude.

Jimi, being familiar with the object's placement in the star field, positioned the scope and tried various eye pieces, and sure enough, after patiently waiting for what sky conditions would reveal, got a few "pops" of the object with averted vision. The better eye piece choice seemed to be his 10mm ZAO2 Zeiss, with a Sloan G filter, presenting better contrast and matching the sky seeing conditions. Then I took a turn, and after several minutes of waiting for sky conditions to co-operate, got three distinct "pops" with averted vision. Jimi then tried his 9mm TMB super monocentric with Sloan G filter, and got a few "pops" with it as well. I tried that eye piece combination and got one "pop". We decided that the 10mm ZAO2 seemed to match the sky conditions better, and during the hour long attempt while the scope was trained on the object's star field, Jimi was able to hold the object with averted vision to the count of 4. I got a total of 7 "pops" during the evening's effort, and told Jmi I was pleasantly surprised we could actually capture these elusive photons in my scope. We both commented that a night of excellent seeing and transparency would definitely help in observing an object like this one, which is clearly on the ragged edge of my scope's capability.

It was a definite benefit having Jimi present with his advanced observing skills and excellent eye pieces and filter, and I'm sure that made the difference for me between success or failure on an object like this.