John

Agreed - AR3664 has been a memorable sight, coupled with the aurora a few days ago, plus some nice warm weather, a memorable week for us astronomers 😀

Thick cloud cover here - it would need to be a very strong display to be seen though that !

24 minutes ago, AlcorAlly said:

Stayed up until 1 a.m. last night waiting for the aurora! Unfortunately, it never came, but I looked at some nice doubles under decent seeing conditions, including Rho Herculis, Mu Draconis, Delta Cygni, and Xi Bootis.
The highlight for me was Delta Cygnus. A very beautiful pair, reminding me of Izar but calmer and a lot less colorful.

I looked at Delta Cygni as well last night. It's one of my favourites in that part of the sky 🙂

No aurora here either last night. Still recovering from the previous night though so won't forget that in a hurry !

33 minutes ago, wookie1965 said:

John which is best for bringing this out in my 120mm xlt a Oiii or UHC filter thanks. 

Both will work but an O-III has quite a lot more impact on the Veil Nebula. It's a big target so low magnification and as wide a field of view as possible are the way to go (as well as the filter and a dark sky).

13 minutes ago, JOC said:

Which direction is best to look please, we are assuming North?

I used to think that the northern horizon was where to look but last night the direction to look was up - the "pillars" of the aurora seemed to be pointing towards the zenith. I was surprised at the large scale of the thing with large swathes of the sky being covered at times.

Rather cloudy here and no sign of similar levels of activity, as yet.

The Veil Nebula ?

I'm only visual but it's a summer highlight for me, year after year 🙂

So much of it as well - it's like half a dozen nebulae in one complex !

Busy day entertaining grandchildren today but I did get a quiet half hour late afternoon to point my Vixen 102 refractor at the Sun. Might be my last view of the magnificent AR3664 😢

For the late afternoon the seeing seemed quite steady here:

15 minutes ago, WolfieGlos said:

Aurora has just started here again! What a night!

Yep - just started to see those "pillars" of light again here too.

Glad I don't have to be up early !

A night to remember 😁

What did we do to deserve this ? - put up with all that rubbish weather over the past few months I guess 😁

It's the sheer scale of the thing that amazes me. In the past I've been searching for something happening towards the northern horizon. This stuff covers most of the sky and we seem to be right underneath it !!!!

Stunning display here in North Somerset. I've never seen anything like it !

Pinks, greens, blues and violet hues. Immense waves of colour extending towards the zenith. Constantly changing. Sometimes vague, sometimes very distinct. Just saw a meteor flash through the colours above Deneb.

The media is going to be full of this tomorrow morning 😁

Sort of bands of subtle pink and occasional greenish right across the sky here. They change all the time, sometimes stronger, sometimes fading away. My other half has confirmed what I'm seeing. Nice to see this together 😄

It's still looking impressive. 70mm frac and Lunt HW used here plus mobile held over eyepiece:

3 hours ago, Geoff Lister said:

Last night, there was thin high cloud, but I was able to image C2023 A3, again after aligning the Seestar with Porrima. The image developing on my tablet's display seemed to take longer to form, than a few nights ago; probably due to the thin cloud. This time, I had not centred the Seestar on the comet, but the recorded image included the target name.

Geoff

That confirms that I was seeing my "averted smudge" in the right place at least 🙂

It might be worth starting a new thread on eyepieces for your scope choice - it can be a complex subject - more complex than choosing the scope, believe it or not !

Better night than last night here. A good one in fact 🙂

I stuck with the 70mm refractor that I used during daylight to look at that monster sunspot and had some fun looking at double stars, a couple of planetary nebula plus (just !) comet C2023 A3.

Rather a warm night as well. 

Pushing things a bit tonight with just the 70mm refractor. After some careful searching I did manage to spot Comet C2023 A3 with the little scope. Not far from where it was last night. I could see stars down to magnitude 10.7 with direct vision at around 80x magnification but the comets elongated fuzz needed a little averted vision to get a sure and repeatable sighting. Not the ideal scope or skies for keeping tabs on a small magnitude 10 comet but there you go ! 🙄

Not surprised that @Nyctimene / Stephan (post above) is getting a somewhat better view with his 8 inch scope though 🙂

Thanks very much for all the suggestions. A lot more to muse about ! 🙂

Having really enjoyed using my current 70mm ED refractor for white light solar viewing today, I'm minded to keep that scope and add a small newtonian or ST102 to my stable, to use on my travel alt-az mount, so then I have a couple of options, assuming that I can stow 2 small OTA's without too much disapproval from my better half 🙄

I've seen a Skywatcher 114p OTA for sale recently for not a lot. I guess an ST102 would do a similar job on the deep sky though 🤔

Got this out this morning:

This is why I did:

I did some quick white light solar this morning with my 70mm frac and the Lunt HW. Report plus basic pics here:

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/421943-look-at-the-sun-in-wl-carrington-class-massive-sunspot/?do=findComment&comment=4484722

Got my little 70mm frac onto this one with the Herschel wedge 🙂

Bit of a whopper, isn't it 🙂

(apologies for the crummy images - I'm certainly no imager 🙄)

Got this comet with my 4 inch Vixen refractor tonight. Quite challenging still with the smaller apertures ! Short report here:

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/385898-what-did-you-see-tonight/?do=findComment&comment=4484674

Got Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS with the 102mm Vixen tonight. It's been very hazy up until about half an hour ago so this was a quick foray with the 4 inch scope. 

The comet is estimated at magnitude 10.1 this evening, which seems accurate. A bit of a challenge with the skies tonight. I needed 83x (Ethos 8mm) to see it clearly one the end of a short line of magnitude 8 and 9 stars, in Virgo.

This chart from theskylive website:

Could this be a naked eye comet later in the year ? - we will see 🙂

11 minutes ago, Louis D said:

That's my point.  You simply can't take a big vehicle out to the British countryside to haul a big telescope even if you had one and could afford the gas (petrol) for it.  I suppose you could try to go with a long and slim trailer to haul a large telescope, though.

I was at a star party a few years ago when a guy turned up towing what appeared to be a small horse box. He opened up the rear doors, let down a couple of ramps and gently rolled a 20 inch dobsonian, on wheels, down onto the field. 

My interests are more modest than this though 🙂

A "quart into a pint pot" as the saying goes:

5 hours ago, Louis D said:

I notice a lot of really small cars in the parking lot.  I'm not sure our full sized SUVs could even fit down most country roads in Britain.  A Chevy Suburban is 81" wide while compact hatchbacks are more like 66" to 70" wide, which is an entire foot narrower.

Add to that, a lot of Americans like to bring their RV to remote campsites.  A fifth-wheel trailer is around 100" wide while the dually pickup truck hauling it is 96" wide.  I'll bet it would get interesting passing two of those on those narrow country roads in Britain.

When we visited Arizona a few years ago, the rental car was a mid-size option, a Nissan I seem to recall, which seemed quite large to me when I got into it and started off. Once we got out into the large scale Arizona landscape though, the car seemed rather small. In countries such as the USA, Australia and Canada, larger cars seem to fit in well. 

Over here in the rural areas of my part of the UK there are plenty of small lanes where the hedges will almost be touching the wing mirrors on both sides of my small hatchback 😬