Isle of Wight - What a night!

[Krys]

Down south on the Isle of Wight - what a night we have Beautiful cloudless sky, still air and fantastic all round. No scope tonight, just my bare eyes and bins too appreciate the sweeping panorama of it all.

Jupiter, Sirius, Gemini and Orion all blazing in the sky. Jupiter still quite low, and my small bins could only pick out two moons - Stellarium suggests they are probably Ganymede and Europa. Then gazing at Sirius for a bit just drinking in the brilliance of this star - and having taken Egyptology at uni, it's significance in Egyptian mythology and calendar (the Sothic cycle and all that). It also got me wondering about the binary nature of the Sirius system, and I wonder if any amateurs here have succeed in splitting these most unequal of stellar companions?

After that and some wide field sweeps I drank in the beauty of the Great Orion nebula, the background gasses appearing in a greenish colour to my eyes, with 5 stars within the well formed cloud quite easily discernible. It was certainly the best I have ever seen it - with more detail seen tonight through 10x50 bins that I have previously managed on the Travelscope 70. Not to knock my baby Celestron - the sky tonight was just that good!

Happy times 

[orion25]

A night that dreams are made of! Do you ever listen to music under headphones while observing? Sometimes, I like to feel like I'm in a sci-fi movie under the stars with my very own music soundtrack 

Astronomical evenings,

Reggie

[Paul73]

Fantastic. Nice read.

I'm just heading out. Hoping for a bit of a galaxy fest!!!

Paul

[estwing]

i struggled to see much more in the sky when i was in sandown back in aug...but then again my skies at home arent that bad....nice read.

[SnakeyJ]

Great report Krys - the trans was excellent last night before midnight, I saw a couple of nice meteors and had the roof open until 6am - fighting the dew on my secondary, but seeing deteriorated for Jupiter. Still an excellent night and 11hrs of astro dark in Bembrige :-)

[Astro Imp]

Great report, a night like that makes all the crud worthwhile.

Thanks for sharing.

[NorrinRadd]

Krys, you should come back over for one of the star parties the island has. Visitors are always welcome here..especially astronomy ones !