A very clear (but very cold!) night last night saw a few of us from the Cotswold AS get together for an observing session in north Gloucestershire - a nice dark site, albeit a bit muddy. I took my Celestron C6 SCT along, and there was a good collection of refractors and reflectors present too.

Various nice objects on show; I spent some time on M42 as it's hard to see from my garden, and it looked fantastic at x63 - with a decent dark sky it is amazing to see how large it is, and M43 was really clear too. Next I had a look at beta Moncerotis - lovely triple star. M1 was good as well - about as good in the 6" scope from this site as it is in my 10" from home, which says a lot about the importance of decent conditions as well as the size of your telescope.

As is often the case when you go to a dark site, some of the best observing was just with the naked eye - picking out M31 and the Double Cluster, and the Milky Way overhead. We got a bonus too - a bright fireball which streaked right overhead just when a load of us were looking! Finally, another look at Jupiter before the cold and damp caused a lot of the kit to dew up.

A great evening's astronomy, and a great turnout too. Unfortunately the forecast doesn't look great for our Stargazing Live stuff at the weekend - snow...??!