hi all

well Clive (Telesto) is coming up with 200p at reflector tonight and the 12" and 90mm will be out as well ,hope to image the moon and hopefully Clive will able to get the tracking go in and get some good moon avi`s.Pleiades is what i want to draw and a few other

clusters whilst Clive gets the video and may be some ,images with the moon and the d10 and 12" reflector,update to follow

update

well what a night last night was,crispy cold ,and it was nearly minus four at one point .Clive arrived (telesto) and set up prior to Clive get in here ,i had a look at Venus which was still in its current phase,Neptune was just there and was more than a dot it was not white,may have been me but it looked a lightish blue and just above venus no good with the 90mm frac i was use in the 300p 6mm tmb.

well after we had a brew and had settled down out side 20 mins later we started to view M35 was the first thing we looked at Clive had not seen it before most of what we seen tonight was for clive ,is first time the amount of double stars tonight was great oranges blues lots of bright stars

i used a 20mm uw for all tonight`s view in, apart from mars we we looked at a lot in Gemini split the double and moved on to cancer ,m44 of course Clive loved it it did look nice tonight and i stuck the 32 mm in for a quick look lovely cluster, the owl cluster was next Clive had a blast to with the 300p and he could clearly see the blue and yellow gold stars easy to fins and see

Orion for a while m78,the neb of course ngc 2175 split Rigel very nice double clearly seen,

sigma Orion errm, Ursa major next mizor was naked eye with alcor,m81/82 where hard to find at this point as the moon was above the trees and its massive glow proceeded it 30 mins before,then seen Clive was really pleased his glow from seeing the clusters was keep in me warm he seen all but m81/82 with his scope as the moon was shocking ,we then looked at Andromeda and its galaxy, which filled the 20mm ultra wide both me and Clive noted how bright the center was tonight .

but the high light for both of us must have been M33,have in a telrad makes this great galaxy soooo easy to find and theres a lot to be said about the guy who made these possible genius,m33 wow at a few points i did see the dust lanes the 32mm ep was needed for this ,and averted vision, and a little tap on the side of the scope,and a mean little taps ,on the scope and the dust lanes popped in and out of my vision the shivers were not just from the minus 4,either the scopes were covered in ice at this point ,but may i say the fan was running all night and the dew shield on .i was taken with this for a bout 25 mins on and of and clive was busy relocate the other targets we had set up for the night he was star hopping to them and have in a great time with is 200p truss tube auto track his diy skills with a light shroud and dew shield out of a camping mat he had made a few days before were excellent .

the quote of the night goes to Clive,

"pat is that mars just above the trees","yes mate" ,"pat i have it in the ep, with a 6mm and i can see a white bit at the top and a brown line and a dark L shape near the bottom" i was still on m33 blinking my eye lids and tap in the tube this method for any galaxy always brings out loads of detail for me ,i was in the shed and have in the dew shield on it was not possible to drop the scope down that low as it would have hit the sides of the shed, i sneaked a look with Clive`s 200p and is 6mm ep wow wee no wonder he was smiling away , he was right the polar ice cap was so obvious there was a dark feature running just below it and there was a prominent L shape feature ,my first real view in 2 years and from the back garden,at this point clive legged it to the kitchen and got the camera and laptop, a few avi`s got we went in for a drink seeing was not that great for video and you could see features on mars on the vid but the stacks would only stack 50 out of 500 ,

what a night great all round Clive ticked of plenty of doubles,clusters nebs,double clusters and every thing in between ,i did not write every thing down as the wow moments did not stop all night thanks for reading

todd8136