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Clear skies on Friday night? No, can't be!


David Smith

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Well it was last night and a cracking night it was too. I was up late anyway with one thing and another and had been keeping an eye on the sky as forecast was for clear later but had been cloudy much of the evening and SAT24 didn't seem promising. Poked my head out the door as I was heading to bed to be greeted by Orion and a bunch of other sparklers! My fate was set, suited up (was quite chilly) and pulled out the dob for a session.


Started with Orion and M42 / 43 with the ES18mm. A spectacular start. Followed this by crossing over to Pisces to look for Uranus which took some time. As normal it is very difficult to make out any of the stars in Pisces and hence a combination of binoculars, RDF, finder and widefield eyepieces was required. Once in the right field Uranus is bright and obvious in the finder and shows a small aquamarine coloured disk. Pumped up the magnification with the ES6.7 in the hope of maybe making out one of the planets moons but could not. This gave me the first indication that the seeing wasn't great as Uranus' disk was not very sharp and the moon hunt was probably a bit optimistic in the conditions

Close by was asteroid 37 Fides and this was a relatively easy find as I had a starting place.

After that came M31 / M32 / M110, another crowd pleaser in the ES18mm. From here I went looking for other asteroid targets. Quick look at CdC showed a few in Taurus which was high in the sky but not too high. In particular, 196 Philomela is close to the crab nebula which would make an interesting stop off on the way. Crab was found relatively easily in the ES18mm and I tried the ES11 with UHC filter but was unimpressed with the result. The asteroid turned out to be in quite a busy area of the sky but it was still relatively easy to distinguish from the back ground stars using CdC as my guide.

At this point I had a wander with the binoculars and managed to find M41 in Canis Major  which is too low for me to get the scope on.

After that I couldn't resist a peak at Jupiter rising in the east and as it turns out I couldn't have timed it better. Soon became obvious in the ES6.7mm that there was a shadow transit in progress with the distinctive sharp black dot on the disk. S&T.com indicates this was Ganymede's shadow.

Lastly (with the scope anyway) I went back to Orion for a second look at M42. Think this is probably the best view I have ever had of the nebula. Can't remember it ever being so extended. There is the normal "ovarian" shape cloud associated with the trapezium but the whole thing has delicate tendrils of gas extending back from the trapezium. This area is littered with intricate detail and I spent quite some time just taking in the sight.

After that the time of day (night) started to take it's toll on me and I sat back for a while just soaking up the sparkling sky and was treated to a meteor crossing the sky in the south at 04:00 local time.

Been a while since I have had a long session like that. Finally crawled into bed at 04:50 BST.

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Superb ! It's not been the best seeing, but at least clear. It's easier to locate Uranus by binoculars first, really bright and quite stunning. I had the Ganymede transit using a 5.5 Mead 5000 and a UHC filter. The view doesn't compare to the huge details at opposition, it's a struggle to tease details out.

All worth getting out for , hopefully under

Clear skies !

Nick.

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