Summery Scorpius

[cotterless45]

Another calm and still night. Saturn was a bit better and took x220 to show the surface features. It's set very well above red Antares.

I could get above Antares to catch the globular M4, M80 and M107.

Straight up and M102 in a Draco again showed it's bright core.

The Moon provided a good show earlier on and it was a pleasant view of Venus, Jupiter and Luna all strung out equidistantly on the ecliptic. The terminator showed the bright white Mount Pico and Tenerife mountains. Further south , a stunning view of the Straight Wall. Seeing was a bit dodgy , but very welcome .

Spent the rest of the night on some stunning doubles in Bootes and Hercules.

This is a difficult , bit rewarding time of year. Worth the views , under

Clear skies !

Nick.

[Paul73]

Nice writeup Nick.

The last few weeks have been pretty good for haze free southern horizons in these parts. Got to grab the opportunity while it is there!

I got my best ever view of M4 about 10 days ago. The cluster was nicely resolved into stars in my eyepiece, rather than the usual grey smudge.

Paul

[alan potts]

Great as usual Nick, what about a go at Antares, it is tricky one but doable in the right conditions. I am not so bad off even this time of the year as it is dark at 9.20ish but I guess where I used to live in Hull we are looking at gone 10.00. I rememeber well, doing a Lyke Wake walk on June 21st years ago, it was getting light at 2.10 in the morning, I think it was only really dark 3 hours.

Alan

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice write up. It is a difficult time of year. There are quite a few fuzzies I have only started observing when I spent a summer in Tuscany, and made use of the much earlier nightfall to catch those "tail-end Virgo-cluster" galaxies early in the evening session

[Qualia]

Nice report Nick and glad to hear you got a clear and eventful night. I can't view until after midnight, so before the Moon really started to shine, my targets have been very similar to your own: binary stars in Bootes and a number of galaxies therein, Serpens Caput and Scorpius. I don't usually sketch the doubles I find, nor record them, but next time I'm out I will do so, and pass on the report. 

The other week, I was able to split Antares and if I recall, I don't think I needed a great amount of magnification to do so with the 10". The 10mm Delos is my usual double star 'spotter' and if I get the hint of somethiing going on, I might change to a 7mm Ortho, or there abouts. This usual procedure suggests that 125x hinted at the double in Antares and 180x had split it. Needless to say, the seeing this last fortnight has been good; there has been gorgeous banding on Saturn to tweek and I even think I caught the odd glimpse of Encke's division in Saturn.

Sadly, by the time I can observe I think I'm coming to the end of the galaxy season, but no matter, globulars are already there waiting in the wings

[estwing]

Not ticked the wall...clear skies Nick

[cotterless45]

Been an awful year so far. I'm up to 38 noted sessions and we're coming up to half time. Just have to grab what you can. Shame really, Cygnus and co are coming up to their best,

Old Nick.