What was that?

[Fypunky]

Its been a while since I have been on due to work and home commitments but last night we had just finished the garden jobs off and I said to our Livi "lets get the telescope out" 

Jupiter is still very good viewing for us at the moment so we spent some time viewing before we swung round to catch our fist observation of Mars through her scope, although not best viewing conditions it was still great to see our third planet through the scope.

We then spent some time ticking off some of the last Lunar 100s and by this time it was getting close to the fly by of the ISS.

Bang on time the ISS came into view so out came the binoculars to follow it, as it passed through cancer I notice a massive cluster of stars  , bear in mind we are novices and this was not my normal planned outing with targets but I was blown away by what I saw, we followed the ISS out of view then I went straight back to find the cluster, it took a while but I did eventually find it, took a bearing from a very faint star (Asellus Australis) and guided the scope towards the cluster (Telrad, best bit of kit I bought). 

With the 15mm lens in I found it fairly quickly and what a sight, hundreds (well 200) of stars in the cluster it was for me a WOW cluster, not as bright as or even dare I say impressive as Pleiades but spectacular non the less.

So what was we looking at? Out came the phone and pointed it to that direction and up popped M44, The Beehive Cluster, I had tried to spot this cluster some time back with no joy so I was happy to tick this one off, Livi also loved it and we both spent some time just watching it.

We have guest's coming over today so we are hoping for clear skies so we can hold a little star party (have been planning and have a few new targets) and show them the wonders live.

[cotterless45]

Neat, from the edge of town on better nights M44 ( "The Beehive") can be spotted by eye. Another very high ISS pass at 9.01 tonight and a lower at 10.38, hope that you get

Clear skies,

Nick.

[rawstack]

How very strange! I decided to get my kit out last night too and ended up imaging said beehive cluster! Here is the rather amateurish result:

Hope you have a nice clear night for your star party!

Mike

[cotterless45]

Neat, we had a look and found so many colours ,

Nick.