hi again, what a brilliant trip and amazing weather. friday night was stonking, milkyway was blazing, and the sagitarius split was so so obvious. but no scope that night as it was to late, just watched naked eye
saturday scope was cooling and colimated but as evening fell everything was soaked, must of been the heat of the day 26* R/H was at 96%. no high power views, the veil was lovely even with no filter, those skys are black. m31 showed lovely dust lanes. on to my old favourites dumbell and the ring. the dumbell showed lots of stars either in front of it or behind it. lovely, everything else was quite poor.
sunday night, started out quite good, whilst it was just going dark( 9.15) you could already see the milkyway, saturn was up had a nosey cassini was so obvious and black at 480x with my 5mm pentax, amazing sight. jupiter was just behind a building so no look there. scanned the skys but the sky went poor, you could still see the milkyway in all its glory but it was like looking through a goldfish bowl. everything was wet like it ha just rained, even m81/m82 were rubbish. came mignight and tried again, aimed at mars to check transparency and it was all wobbily, you could see the obvious ice caps and some dark regions but that was it. dso wise very poor, even the poor old veil looked like it was dying.
so hope to return winter time, these bortle 2 skys would of been amazing and hope they will be next time
mike