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Highlights of 2014.


cotterless45

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What have been your observing highlights ? Mine are quite simple,

Rocket fuel dump , spotted on the 13th December.

The M82 supernova , observed on the 23rd of January.

Mars at opposition in April, showing several bright areas of snow / ice and the ice cap.

Comet C/2014 E2 (Jacques) very enjoyable in August.

That's it , a very full and a eventful year, hoping for some seasonal,

Clear skies !

Nick.

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Ah, not many this year, as it's been a very difficult one, full of upheaval. I am ashamed to say......six telescope sessions, plus three binocular sessions and around five night-time hikes?

There were a few sessions; my mind recalls a dim and distant session in April, where I explored the galaxies, the night sky providing peace that I desperately needed...... but the best session was last month, in my new location under very dark skies.

I had my family with me as we all packed into the car with the monster dob. We saw some angular streaks of light in the sky, which I passed off as farmer's headlights, or a comet - I was really out of the loop of astronomy happenings!! The telescope revealed no core so my theory went back to direct LP...

A bit of online research identified Gegenschein. In all the years I have been observing the sky, with mk1 eyeballs and telescope, it was the first time I had even seen it.  :)

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Highlights for me have been :

Sketching for the first time and starting a proper notebook.

Comet Lovejoy

SN2014J in M82

Double moon shadow transit Jupiter 9/3/14

Sketching Mars through the season with increasing detail

Splitting Sirius A/B

Comet Jacques

Sun spot AR2192

First Ha with PST mod.

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Most of mine have been already mentioned. I'll add a few more:

- I've spent some very enjoyable time identifying the features around the Apollo 15 landing site on the Moon including the Hadley Rille and Mount Hadley.

- Increasing my personal tally of Plato caterlets spotted to 10 on one memorable night quite a few months back.

- Following Uranus close approach to the Lunar limb and seeing that pale blue disk appearing to hang over the lunar limb at 265x magnfication rather like that famous Earthrise picture that the Apollo 8 astronauts took.

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I think for me my highlights are

- SN2014J at the beginning of the year

- seeing dust lanes in M31

- M42 from a dark site with the 200p and 14mm es82

- showing my nephew Saturn

- comet jacques, even though I only got it from my heavily polluted garden

- Really enjoying studying the moon and how over a period of time the subtle changes in the terminator change the view..

- exploring scorpious region from corfu

- the sun from corfu.. (came across loads of photos, might post them)

- last but not least bringing my first born home from hospital (not technically allowed I know, but it's definitely the best thing I've done this year!)

Clear sky's for 2015 and seasons greetings to all

Fozzie x

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Many of my higlights have also been listed already.

The year started very well with SN2014J, followed by a fantastic Mars opposition, I managed to see some excellent surface detail, loads of galaxies and quasar 3C273 in Virgo/Coma, 3 Uranian moons, Triton, then my first views of the Veil and Crescent nebulae, followed by splitting Sirrius A&B just this week.

Most of which was made possible by my Skyliner 400P Dob which I bought in Feb.

What an awesome year and so much more to see!

Clear skies everyone and thank you for all the interesting posts and friendly advice along the way.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Steve

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Before I bore you to tears, be warned I love these recap the year posts!

#1 with no shadow of a doubt was an impromptu session on the California coast with only the 10x50 bins. Exceptionally dark sky and my first proper look at the Milky Way as an adult. The sight of Mars, Saturn, and Antares lining up to set over a shimmering sea was a bonus of absolute magic I'll not soon forget! I could see so many glowing bundles of light in Sagittarius I couldn't make sense of it all!

#2 was coming back from that vacation and treating myself to a small refractor to travel with. No looking back!

#3 comets Jacques and Lovejoy and the M81 supernova were very fun

#4 M33 from Yosemite. So easy with a dark sky!

#5 M81 & M82 through a humble 2" skywatcher EP simply blew me away! I wasn't expecting them to be so obvious that night.

#6 the first Nagler (which I'm not allowed to talk about yet) ;)

Thanks all for sharing your experience and advice on the forum.

Clear Skies

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Swampthings reaction when viewing M42 with my 21E!..... The Friday night at SWSP..

I think pretty much the whole campsite heard it mate  :cussing:   :eek:  :eek:   :evil6:

My highlight would have to be first light with my homebuilt Dob. Nothing beats the feeling of observing with something you built with your own hands. 

Observing highlights......err M42 with Calvin's Ethos  :evil6: Mayall II (G1) in andromeda and finally bagging the nags head.

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Too many to mention. Comets and a Supernova have been special. Here are three more:

1/ Discovering the Sagitarius area.

2/ Observing with a decent pair of binos - a whole new experience!

3/ Saturn detail

Bagging all but one of the Messiers without GoTo has been fun too.

Paul

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To me that would be 1st light

After such a long wait, I am still amazed just to be able to look at 'stuff' .. any 'stuff' ! Second would be a glimpse at Uranus, my first planet.

Jupiter with it's moons was quite a sight for me. Thinking that I was doing what countless astronomer had done before me and will do until the end of time (I may be exaggerating a bit there) can't wait to have the ultimate beginner's first look at Saturn :)

To everyone: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year !

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For me it's simply been getting back into this amazing hobby after 15 absent years. I'm so excited about what next year will bring too. I've really missed the night sky. I even like the moon now - in my youth it was always a faint-fuzzy-swamper!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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My first highlight was actually being able to get out and observe for a few occasions this year!!

And then my main highlight was bagging NGC 246 the Skull neb in cetus last month. Using my UHC it was big and bright and I could discern quite a bit of structure. Definitely one I'll be revisiting again.

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A couple stand out for me, not all particularly difficult or anything:

SN2014J in M82,

a memorable view of Andromeda (M31) in my 10x50s from my back garden in October on a really clear night and both my neighbours had remembered to turn their security lights off :)

Fitting all of pleiedes in view with a 30mm erffle in my 100mm f13

and especially Mars - had some fantastic evenings with my 150mm (when I still had it) - love those nghts where with patience you can really tease out some great detail.

Slighlty separately, I feel pleased finally to have got my TAL125R sorted out, and now it's my weapon of choice, when I do get out!

Second half of the year hasn't been so good - not had a lot of time or inclination due to work etc., but a couple of clear nights are forecast over Christmas, so I'm hoping to end the year with some quality Jupiter time!

Happy Christmas :)

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