A new star cluster for me.

[michael23]

Reading the asteroid thread the other night got me updating stellarium to see if I could locate the asteroid, so decided to take my binoculars ( a pair of 8x43) and terrestrial opticron scope out to the garden. Surprised to see one of the best clear skies this year, I failed to locate the asteroid, need bigger binoculars I think!

Anyway the session prooved to be successful as I came up on a new star cluster, M44, (the beehive I have since found out) I was amazed that I hadn't seen this in the past when generally gazing. An attempt at a picture below, I do think I had a bit of condensation on my lens as I had "fun focussing"

m44 by scilly puffin, on Flickr

I had a look for lovejoy, it looked fairly good at 20x through my little scope, and I am sure I could see a pinpoint of light at the centre. A poor record shot..!

comet lovejoy by scilly puffin, on Flickr

I also attempted a pic of the orion nebula which looked rather nice, even at a small magnification

orion nebula by scilly puffin, on Flickr

And the pleiades

pleiades by scilly puffin, on Flickr

And very nearly got a bit of detail on jupiter on video.

All the pics here were taken with my canon eos 70d and sigma 50-500 and the video included 3-10x digital zoom

[dick_dangerous]

You might not win any astrophotography prizes with these record shots but they're actually a fair representation of what things look like down an eyepiece in a small telescope - you were using a spotting 'scope right? I'm hoping to use one at a beginner's astronomy evening I'm running, so I'm interested in seeing what the view's like through one.

DD

[cotterless45]

Neat, we got avery brief glimpse of dark skies. I was pleased to see how bright comet Lovejoy was and got a bright round M81 and elongate M82 in 15x70's.

M44 is lovely, quite an easy hop from Gemini. Don't forget the nearby M67.

There's quite a few other overlooked Messiers. Include M34,M50, M46, M47, M93 and M41'

Nick.

[michael23]

You might not win any astrophotography prizes with these record shots but they're actually a fair representation of what things look like down an eyepiece in a small telescope - you were using a spotting 'scope right? I'm hoping to use one at a beginner's astronomy evening I'm running, so I'm interested in seeing what the view's like through one.

DD

thanks for looking. Yes it is an opticron hr66 ed with a 20x eyepiece. It gives a great view of the moon. Jupiter is small at 20x but all 4 moons are visble.things like the pleiades and thr bee hive look really good through it too.

[michael23]

Neat, we got avery brief glimpse of dark skies. I was pleased to see how bright comet Lovejoy was and got a bright round M81 and elongate M82 in 15x70's.

M44 is lovely, quite an easy hop from Gemini. Don't forget the nearby M67.

There's quite a few other overlooked Messiers. Include M34,M50, M46, M47, M93 and M41'

Nick.

There is certainly a lot i have not seen, i shall look forwars to the next clear night and see if i can find some more.