Dark Skies at the Lizard, Part Two

[dick_dangerous]

Hi All,

This is the second installment of my dark sky adventures in Cornwall. We chose to go to the Lizard for a number of reasons: its unique geology, the wildlife, the fact that Roskilly's Ice Cream farm is situated and there and because its skies are famously dark. But more than that, the Lizard is quite unique because once you get down on to the tip of the peninsula you're in the only part of mainland Britain below 50 degrees north. This is very useful because it increases the chances of seeing some of those low-down Messiers - you can probably see where this is going, but basically this was my best chance at finding that stinker of a galaxy M83, the Southern Pinwheel - one of the most challenging objects that you can possibly see from Blighty and the thorn in the side of anyone trying to observe the Messier catalogue.

20/04/2015 - Kynance Cove

So the wind had died down, we enjoyed a lovely meal in the pub (And if you're ever in the area, I heartily recommend the Cadgwith Cove Inn) and I was given permission by my lovely wife to sally forth down the terrifying country lanes to Kynance Cove. I double-checked my collimation before leaving and had it spot on this time, leading to a much better viewing experience. Once set up in the pitch dark, my eyes thoroughly dark adapted, I started my night's observing:

• Leo Triplet - This became something of a standard for lining up finderscopes etc. There was definite shape to both M65 and M66 this time, making me very grateful I'd tweaked the collimation.
• Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) - Impossible to see in London, I like to take the chance to view this hazy old face-on when under decent skies. It rewarded me this time with a large disc of faintly glowing galaxy, a clear concentration in the middle. One of my best ever views of this elusive object.
• M108 - Continuing the Ursa Major theme I moved on to this splendid spiral, aligned at more of an angle.
• Owl Nebula (M97) - To be fair, I've never even attempted this from Teddington, but I suspect it would be invisible. At x80, with a UHC filter, I got a lovely circle of bluish light with the famed eye structures visible with AV. At this point I could tell it was going to be one of those nights.
• NGC3631 - A small faint galaxy found by sheer fluke while faffing around in the Dob hole looking for the previous two.
• NGC188 (C1) - Pretty little open cluster just below Polaris.
• M68 - One of those challenging, low-down globular clusters. Fairly easy to find - follow the left-hand stars of Corvus down to a Mag 5.5 star that it sits next to. No resolution was possible.
• Virgo Cluster - These are visible under LP (Or some of them are anyway, on a good night) - I went searching for, and found, M87, M89, M90, M58, M60 and Makarian's Chain. There were a hole slew of others, but the magic of this region of sky has to be the sheer number of galaxies visible in one place.
• NGC4361 - A faint little planetary nebula in Corvus. Quite neat, but there are better out there...
• Southern Pinwheel Galaxy (M83) - So this was my main ulterior motive for coming down to the Lizard. To be honest, I could have taken the ST80 to Tenerife and seen it, but there's something rather challenging about trying to find a faint smudge of light a mere 9 degrees above the horizon. There were moments where I feared I wouldn't find it - a lot of haze had hung around in the early evening, but this dissipated as the night wore on. So around midnight I went looking for the infamously difficult Southern Pinwheel. Finding the guide stars in the finder this close to the horizon is hard and I quickly locked on to its general location. Try as I might I couldn't find it though, with a star map that wasn't quite detailed enough. There were moments where I thought I had it that were quickly followed by the realisation I didn't. In the end I used Sky Safari on my phone and established that I was in almost the right place. So with a little adjustment (And a little time to allow my eyes to readapt from the Smartphone - even on red mode, it's still bright!) I finally landed on a faint, irregularly oval patch of light. It was like smoke behind glass, but was undoubtedly what I'd come in search of. A little whoop was given as this is my 109th Messier.
• Jupiter - M83 isn't spectacular from Britain so I next had a look at Jupiter which was showing loads of ragged edges and one of its moons very close to the right limb.
• Saturn - It's back! And it's blurry as being so close to the horizon. I could see the ring system but it was very shaky. Always nice to revisit Saturn though...
• M13 - To end on a high I went for this classic globular - it showed a huge extent, even with my low-power eyepiece in, and I was getting resolution right in to the core. If only we had these sorts of skies in London...

And that was it for the night and the holiday. On later nights I opted to stay at home with my wife and test out my new bat detector, so I didn't do any more observing. I have only one more Messier object to find and that's the notorious M74 - that's going to need some crystal clear, dark skies to find, but who knows what the autumn might bring?

Thanks for reading!

DD

[cotterless45]

Neat report ! You just can't beat enough time and dark skies ,

Nick.

[Joe_L]

+1 for Roskilly's!

[estwing]

Nice targets there well done

[dick_dangerous]

Cheers all - it was nice to get out there again after a bit of a hiatus. March skies were terrible in London on the days when I was able to get out and the Easter holiday was super-busy, so I'm glad the weather cooperated for our time in Cornwall. Got some good walking in too, and spotted grey seals and gannets off Lizard Point. No chough though.

+1 for Roskilly's!

I had a sundae called a "Minty Moo." It was very good...

DD