13/04/2010

Time Started: 2145 UT Time Finished: 2230 UT

Weather: clear and cold, hardly a breeze. Dark Sky Scale: 5, suburban sky. Transparency: 5, good. Seeing: 6, very good, hardly a shimmer. Celestron 15x70 binoculars used.

Travelled a short distance from home to a place on the coast which although suffers from similar levels of lp to home has the sea and darkness as a backdrop.

Taking advantage of the continuing clear evenings to observe and find my way around the night sky. Tonight i am concentrating on the constellation of Auriga.

Only a short session tonight because of the bitter cold.

After a while getting my bearings and looking around Auriga i managed to locate M38 and a short time after M36. I wasnt able to definately locate M37 however.

Spent around 30 mins observing Auriga.

Next turned my attention to the nebula in Orion which is nicely visible from this particular site as two distinct patches of fuzz. The gap clearly visible between the two.

Finished off the session by recognising the constellations of Leo, Gemini, Perseus, Cassiopea and Ursa Major with the aid of a star chart.