Surrounded by forrest 19th May 2012

[assasincz]

I recently discovered a promising and fairly dark observing site some 40 minutes away from home, (by car) so last night, as the weather above Czech Republic was pretty much spotless, I decided to try it out. According to google maps, the site was on a meadow, surrounded by forrest, accessible by a simple (very rough) road and it was just so. I arrived at the place just after sunset, set up my kit as soon as I could to let my 300P cool down and then I settled down to enjoy the tranqulity of the place.

First, I observed the sharply crescent Venus as it was getting near the horizon, watching it as it was setting beyond the trees, which was rather interesting. After that, it took a while to get properly dark, but I was in no rush. To pass the time, I lied down on a blanket and stared straight up - before it got dark, I saw three bright shooting stars and was amazed as to how busy the sky is, with all the airplanes and satellites. It seemed more like a city swarming with traffic to me, than a quiet sky.

Nevertheless, as it got dark, so some telescope observing was in order. Over the night, I observed quite a few objects, including Mars and Saturn, but the seeing turned out to be terrible that night, so I concentrated on DSOs nstead, mainly galaxies in Virgo cluster and a few in Leo. I found out, that being new to the whole Leo and Virgo clusters, it might take a while to be able to wrap my head around the sheer number of galaxies to fully appreciate it.

Even though though the session was going well, some heavy dew started to settle in, which complicated locating objects a bit - I constantly had to wipe the lenses of the finderscope and of my SkyMaster binos to be able to see anything. It was also uncomfortably cold weather.

After skipping through the Leo and Vigro clusters, I decided to concentrate on some old friends instead, so I did exactly that. The area of Cygnus, Lyra and Hercules was exceptinally dark and begged exploration. I also really appreciated a pleasant intermezzo in form of very bright Iridium flare in Cygnus. M57 was brighter than ever, revealing its squished shape and opaque centre of the ring beautifully. M27 was also suprisingly bright, appearing wider and more eloquent then ever before. Visiting the Dumbell nebula, I also took a look at M71 as well, which appeared to be merging with background starfield and more rich in sheer number of stars than I have ever seen before.

I then inspected the Hercules region, concentrating solely on the glorious M13 which seemed more a like a disco ball to me, and I also tried to locate NGC 6207 that was near it and was suprisingly apparent. Seeing a famous globular cluster and a nice oval galaxy in one field of view delivered a great sense of perspective.

I then tried observing my ever feared foe, M101 in UMa. Any earlier attempts at it resulted only in spotting only the birght core and an indifferent blob around it. However, as the site was expectionally dark and M101 was practically in zenith, this was not the case this time. This time, a nice large round fuzzy with sharp edges jumped out at me and the more I looked at it, the more its spiral structure became apparent to me. This was my first time proper seeing M101 and it felt really good. I then located Bode's nebulae and was amazed to see the darker filaments in M82, but as I am quite famaliar with the two galaxies, I moved on.

I then attempted to locate some planetary nebulae like the Blinking Planetary and NGC 6210 in Hercules but the terrible seeing prevened me from spotting some greater detail in those.

By 2 AM, the cold took its toll at me as did the annoying dew - I got impatient and was determined to quit, but before I did that, I sat down on my lawn chair and just marveled at the sight of the band of the Milky Way, stretching across the sky, with all its bulges and filaments and though "wow, that is actually our galaxy". It captivated me for quite some time.

Although quite brief (4-5 hours) and a bit annoying with all the cold and dew, I think it was quite a successful session. Small wonder I slept as if I was dead afterwards.

[Double Kick Drum]

Great report.

Thanks for sharing.

[hayju01]

Nice write up thanks for sharing.

[Astro Imp]

Enjoyed reading your great write up, really felt I was there looking over your shoulder.

[cotterless45]

Brilliant,I'm on my way!

Have a look at the deep sky section ( observing).Thanks for posting,I often just lay on the ground, it's amazing how busy it gets.First the bats come out, then the satellites, then the shooting stars.

We must have seen the same very bright Iridium in Cygnus.Best wishes,

Nick.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice report. M101 can be absolutely stunning from a really dark site, can't it.