29/08/2010

Birkrigg Common, Cumbria

21:00 - 00:30

Arrived at Birkrigg at 21:00 and Set up the Skywatcher 200p and EQ5, once polar aligned I let the scope cool down for 30 minutes, while I found my bearings and scanned the sky with binoculars.

The Moon was still very Low in the East and Jupiter was just coming above the horizon and still in the dirty part of the sky, and viewing the planet was unsatisfactory.

While the Moon was low and not as bright as it had been in the last couple of observing sessions, 62% Waning Gibbous, I decided to locate M31 Andromeda Galaxy which I found very easily, once you know where to look, it's very simple to locate.

21:40 M31 Central dense Core stretched out from the middle and extends right across my eyepiece (32mm). The dense core with it's Billions of stars is certainly one of the nicest objects to view from a dark sky site.

M31 other companion galaxy is M32 and this elliptical galaxy lacks the definition when viewed in a low power eyepiece and is just one of the fuzzy blob galaxies we tend to find in smaller scopes.

After spending 20 to 30 minutes viewing these galaxies, with various eyepieces including at higher magnification with a x2 Barlow lens I decided to move onto the next target.

Spent a while scanning around the Moon which was rising nicely and using my 25mm eyepiece with 2 Moon filters stacked, the views were very good indeed, crystal clear images, and I took a few pictures, which again don't really do it justice.

Turning to Jupiter the image was still a little distorted looking through the dirty atmosphere, but the band could clearly be seen, and the moons Io,Europa,Callisto and Ganymede were all on show, with Europa getting very close to disappearing behind the planet.

While Jupiter was still quite low in the Eastern horizon I went back to an old favourite of mine the Globular Cluster in Hercules,M13 at approx Mag 5.8 is an easy target in the finder scope, and the cluster was located quickly.

Using the 32mm eyepiece the cluster is well defined with plenty of stars around the edges clearly visible. Changing down to a 10mm eyepiece provides a stunning image, a full Globular cluster in all it’s glory. This is one DSO object that every time you view it, your always finding new things to see, inverted views prove best for this. I also tried with a 10mm and x2 Barlow and the cluster snapped into view, the dense core was incredible to view, but this is another object that doesn’t need too much magnification on a 8inch scope. M13 was the best I’ve seen it so far using this scope, the central core filled my eyepiece at 10mm.

I wanted to find M57 I had trouble when using smaller scopes, Using binoculars to locate Sulafat and Shellak in Lyra and moving between these two stars, there is a small dusky blob, bit like an out of focus star.

Centering the object in the finder scope the 32mm eyepiece shows a distinctive ghostly ring and changing over to a 10mm eyepiece clearly shows the planetary nebula, and with a 10mm and a x2 Barlow the dark centre is more defined and using inverted vision, and you can nearly make out an out of focus centre mass, but difficult to see, and is probably just wisps of the nebular ring.

The planetary Nebula is between 1,000 and 5,000 light years away from us, and has got to be the best eyepiece DSO to date!

At this time (August/September at 23:00) M57 is almost directly overhead and this makes it difficult to view and the observer must be careful not to smack the scope on the tripod!

It was then back to Jupiter for a final look before packing up at 00:15, and heading back home, very cold but extremely happy with the nights viewing.

I did drop my glasses on Birkrigg, and did not notice that one of the lenses had dropped out so if anyone notices a sheep running about with a Patrick Moore monocle can you let me know?

RayGil