Fantastic Binocular Observing Session 24/07/2014

[Tyr]

Last Thursday (the 24th of July) I was off to visit my parents for dinner and the night before heading away for the weekend. All of last week I'd been watching the lengthening of astro dark and wishing I could get out for some clear skys.

So with the prospect of the morning off work and the added bonus of going somewhere with considerably darker skys than where I live, I decided to pack my reasonably new Helios Apollos and tripod to see what they could do.

Location edge of Didcot Oxfordshire. Time 9:45 24th of July to 00:15 25th of July.

All observations made with 15x70 binoculars, steadied with a tripod or the naked eye.

Colour coded as follows: new to me, seen before, failed to find

I was outside and getting setup before it was even fully dark, acturus and the summer triangle were the first to come into view and it wasn't long before I could pick out most of Cygnus and so Albireo made a good first target, the colour was great and the pair nicely split.

Hercules had become visable to the naked eye so I had a look at M13 which was nicely discernable if rather smudge like, I'd seen it better before but it was still quite light at this point.

Next I moved onto the coat hangar asterism which was very nicely framed in the field of view of the bins, and then I swept the milkyway with the bins for a while whilst I waited for it to get a bit darker.

I'd come lightly equipped so I didn't have a proper star atlas just July and Augusts copies of the sky at night magazine with the idea of getting around some of the binocular tour objects, but I hoped to see something new.

I decided to start off the tour with the dumbel planetary nebular M27 I was sceptical about being able to see this in binoculars, but what a supprise it was as good as I'd seen it from Reading with a 5" telescope.

Whilst in the area I had a look at M11 the wild ducks cluster in Scutum, it was nice to see that I could see it but it was a little small in the field of view to make out any of the dark patches that I've seen at higher magnification.

I then tried for quite a while and I'm going to chalk this up as a failure to find NGC 6940 an open cluster in Cygnus and on the S@N tour, I probably did see it but I was never able to decide when I was looking at it as there were so many stars in the area and I didn't have a picture at the right magnifaction on hand to compare it to.

Some time around this I saw a bright green meterorite somewhere in this region of the sky, but I didn't have anything to note down the time with me.

Then I had a look at the globular clusters M15 and M2 in Pegasus and Aquarius respectively, I've probably seen M15 before but I think M2 was new to me.

At this point I decided to swing the scope around and have a look at the other side of the sky. I was able to see the Andromeda galaxy M31 rising over the roof of the house, a nice bright core easily seen with direct vision and then an elipical glow becoming apparant with averted vision. I was able to see I think the core of M32 near by with averted vision as a small fuzzy patch.

Then I found the double cluster in Perseus, which I'd seen many times before but never tire of looking at and moved up to Cassiopia to have a look at some objects I'd yet to see before. The asterism called Eddie's Coaster which Stephen Tonkin includes in the August S@N binocular tour was first on the list here, a really nice arrangement of stars and well worth a look with binoculars.

By this time the milky way was clearly visible to the naked eye overhead dark patches and all, running through the summer triangle and down toward the horizon, spectacular and not something I'm lucky enough to see often from Reading where I normally observe.

I then had a look at what is described in the S@N as the Cassiopeiae tripple cluster a collection of NGC open clusters made up of NGCs 663, 654 and 659, not as obvious to the eye as the double cluster but nice as a collection. I also spotted M103 near by which I had I think seen before.

At this point I it was getting late and I thought what the hell I'd see if I could see M81 and M82 not for a moment was I expecting to be able to with binoculars but with averted vision I was pleasantly surprised. I also went back to M13 for another look and with the darker sky the view as much improved, to small to make out any individual stars but a nice bright patch fuzzy around the edges.

Someone turned on a light in the house and I lost some of my night vission so I decided it was a good time to get to bed, all in all a cracking night. Whilst I was packing up a second metorite of the night streaked across the sky, bonus   Also there were many satelites spotted during the course of the evening to numerous (and unidentified) to mention.

I went inside and sribbled down everything I could remember looking at on a bit of scrap paper to make some notes for myself and this report later on.

I hope you've enjoyed reading this and maybe got a few ideas of things to look at, the best night I've had out with the stars for quite a while and it really spurred me on coming up to the new season of astronomical darkness.

[mdstuart]

Glad you enjoyed Eddies coaster..