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Swithin StCleeve

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  1. Thanks. I'll check that out on my next session, though most campsites close at the end of this month, so I'll lose my nice dark sky. The local society has an observing site a few miles outside the city though.
  2. When I arrived at my usual campsite in Shropshire on Monday night, I wasn’t actually expecting to do any astronomy as the forecast wasn’t great, but as I turned my engine off, and turned the van lights off, I was greeted by a wonderful clear sky, with the Milky Way stretching overhead. So without further ado, I set the dob up, (which takes thirty seconds, such is the genius of the dob design). Here my dob at my site in the daytime. I find when I’m in the sticks, (my caravan is at a Bortle 4 site), the Telrad finder is mostly all I need these days. The 10X erecting finderscope I have alongside it is only really needed when I’m closer to town, and I can’t see the stars I’m hopping from. For these observations I used a 28mm eyepiece, unless I say otherwise. I don’t know the field of view, (I don’t even know the correct focal length of my scope, but you can see it’s quite long, about five foot). I find the 28mm fine for deep sky stuff. So, with no plan in place, I started with M57, the Ring Nebula, and it was pleasingly bright. I often overlook M56 – a quite bright globular nearby. I remembered to check it out this night and it’s easily findable in a ‘line’ with stars to the left of the ‘squashed box’ of Lyra. M71 next, and this is fast becoming one of my favourite globulars, probably because it looks so unlike a globula cluster. The 10” mirror really does it justice, but this is on Messier object that can be disappointing in small scopes I think, (note to self, look up what H20 is, it’s right by M71). Just up to the left of Sagitta, I hopped to the easily findable dumbbell nebula. Very bright this evening and the ‘misty bow tie’ shape easily discernible. Hercules was heading west, and I visited his two showpiece globular clusters, with M13 really burning brightly. I’ve only been using the 10” mirror for a few months, the previous five or six years I’ve been using an 8” Skywatcher, and in terms of gathering light, there is a very noticeable difference. Does anyone know how much more light a 10” mirror finds, when compared to an 8”? There must be a formula, (I'm rubbish at maths). Saturn’s moons. Last time I had an observing session I made the mistake of not noting the time down when I made my sketch of the background 'stars'. I didn’t make that mistake this time. I sketched the planet, and every nearby point of light I could see, to check with Stellarium when I got back home, (which was a few days later). I was pleased to see that along with Titan, I’d seen Rhea and Dione with the 15mm eyepiece. Dione was very much just on the verge of visibility. I had to use averted vison, and it only really appeared when the air steadied. The Saturnian moon project is on-going. I wish I’d used a 9mm eyepiece now. M31 was an easy naked-eye object, and I spent quite some time on M110 again. It’s quite bright when you get under a nice dark sky, and I’ve had several pleasing views of it this year. M11, the Wild Duck cluster is always a treat. The duck I can see is different to how other people see it I think. But it’s such a bright pretty cluster, which you couldn't confuse with any other. It's easily found in the Scutum Star Cloud, (yea, I know it's all easily found if you use a go-to, but where's the fun in that?). Yes, I'd insert a smiley there if |I used them. Ursa Major was quite low, and I tried for M97 and M108 in the same field of view. I saw these together earlier in the summer and it was a real treat, but I couldn’t find a single deep-sky object in Ursa Major on this evening, and it was due to the constellation being low in the bright western sky. I couldn’t even find M51, (I didn’t try for Bodes). In fact, after looking at Scutum, then turning the scope to Ursa Major, for a split-second I thought something had gone wrong with my scope! Where have all the stars gone! By this time Jupiter had appeared from behind a tree and all four Galilean moons could be seen, two on each side. Because I'd been trying to find galaxies in Ursa Major, the bright light of Jupiter was a bit of a shock to my eyeball. Up till now I hadn’t got my maps out, so I pulled out my Webb Deep Sky Society Star Atlas and looked at Hercules, which – although quite low, was certainly in a ‘sweet spot’ of dark sky. So I look at page eight and there’s a galaxy – NGC6207 -just above M13, (below in my scope). I wasn’t hopeful, because I have a splendid failure rate with NGC galaxies. But, there it was, and quite unmistakably bright. It looked to be ‘pointing’ to the great cluster, and when I re-checked my map, yes, it was a spiral, and pointing at M13. How had I never seen this before? I must have looked at the Great Cluster hundreds of times over the years. The Webb star atlas doesn’t give magnitudes, and I was off-line so the only way I could find the magnitude of this galaxy was to text an astro-buddy from the Wolverhampton Society. The text told me it was 10.08 mag, which is the Wikki version. I was somehow disappointed it wasn’t dimmer. I didn’t have my observing reference books with me, so it wasn’t till this afternoon I found James O’Meara has included this object in his Secret Deep book , (object 73). He puts it at 11.6, (‘a tiny spiral wonder hiding in the shadow of M13’). I have had conflicting magnitudes before, and whatever the magnitude is (I've also found mag 12.00 on-line, any advance on twelve?) – I think it’s one of the great secrets of the summer sky. A nd what a great reference point this would be, a test as to the darkness of the summer skies? Could it be seen in the true summer, when there is no astronomical darkness? I’m looking forward to finding out. Galaxy NGC6207 isn’t included in my Nortons 2000 by the way. I spent more time with M31, trying to see some dust lanes, and trying to be honest enough with myself to admit – erm. . .no. But I did go back to my Webb book and check out anything ‘new’ for me to see there, and there’s a very large open cluster NGC752. This also has a Caldwell number – 28. And it’s a real treat! Overall mag 5.7, and in my 28mm eyepiece it sat beautifully in the field of view, filling the eyepiece. I’d say the stars are pretty similar in appearance, and evenly spaced. It made me very happy to add this cluster and the galaxy in Hercules to my observation list, and I look forward to visiting them again. After about an hour and a half’s observing, I got cold (I wasn’t really dressed for observing), and hungry. And with the caravan heater on, I retired, about 9.45, with the Pleiades rising above the treeline, leading the way for Taurus, Orion and the winter promise of more deep sky treats in the coming months.
  3. That's stunning, but I wonder if it's based on long exposure photographs, or it's what the human eye would actually see? There's such a difference in what's there, and what we (humans) can see. I think sci-fi has fooled us a little, about what we'd actually see out there, in deep space.
  4. It's easy for me to think that if I were to fly to one of the stars in the trapezium, and look around, the sky would be full of colours and swathes of gas, because you'd be 'in' the Orion Nebula. But in reality, the gas clouds can only be seen visually from much further away . . . Is that how it works I wonder?
  5. In the back of James O'Meara's Messier edition, he asks why we spend so much time looking for faint fuzzies, when the Milky Way is there, bigger and better than all the Messier objects. I should imagine a Bortle 1 sky is an experience akin to a solar eclipse, for its 'wow' factor. I wonder what nebulosity you'd see under a Bortle 1 sky? Would you see Barnards Loop for example? (I know I keep mentioning that, but it's an obvious large nebula that is invisible to the naked eye, I assume!).
  6. In the movie Contact, the character played by Jodie Foster gets to see a galaxy up close. It's a great cinematic moment, and she can't find the words to describe it, and says "you should have sent a poet" This is the view, as the side of the spaceship becomes translucent.. You see this a lot in sci-fi and space movies. And I've always thought how amazing it must be to get so close to a galaxy, and see it like that. But would we see it like that? I mean, what exactly would the human eye pick up, if we were that close to a galaxy? Would it appear as bright as that anyway? It's like when films show spaceships going through nebulosity. Wouldn't the gasses be that spread out, that we wouldn't know we're in nebulosity? Are Hollywood depictions of star-scapes like the above picture, romantic ideas based on long exposure photographs? Like looking at Orion with the naked eye won't show you Barnard's loop, but a long exposure photo will. And when I say Jodie Foster was 'close to a galaxy', well we're actually inside a galaxy, and we don't see a sky like the picture above, do we? Or do we not see the sky like the picture above because we're relatively close to a star, and if we were in space, light years away from the nearest star, the surroundings would be that dark, that we'd see much, much more. Is that how it works? Would we see large nebula with our naked eye (like Barnard's loop), if we were far enough away from the sun? Or is would it always be only viewable through long exposure photos?
  7. Yes, we were near the Long Mynd. Wonderful scenery, as well as superb skies.
  8. Last night (Sunday 3rd Oct) was my first night observing at a new site in the Shropshire hills, joining an observing weekend organised by Wolverhampton Astronomical Society. The gang had already had excellent skies on the Friday and Saturday, but would Sunday night shape up as splendidly? When I arrived, the rain was torrential with 100% cloud cover right up till sunset, but the forecast was hopeful for the evening, and even though I felt skeptical, it did indeed clear and the seeing for the first hour or so was simply stunning. I was pleased to finally take the 'toilet tent' off my 30 year old Dark Sky 10" mirrored reflector on a dobsonain mount, (and mostly used a 35mm eyepiece for the deep sky objects). I had prepared a hit-list of fainter Caldwell objects, but as soon as I saw the Ring Nebula at dusk, I knew the seeing was so good that I’d better take in the brighter deep sky objects with this rare chance of near-perfect seeing, the rain having bought down so much muck from the atmosphere. Really, what is the best thing to do when faced with a great sky at a dark-sky site? Look for the fainter objects you’ve never found, so you can tick more objects off your list, or just look at the old favourites and see them at their best, and take in any new details? I went for the latter, and I’ll first mention two objects I found very impressive tonight. M110, a satellite galaxy to M31, (the great Andromeda galaxy). I’ve never before seen M110 so well defined. Tonight, I’d say M110 was as well defined as M31 appears on an average clear night at the society observatory (seven miles from Wolverhampton). I’ve never seen it so bright. The other big ‘”wow” of the evening was the Perseus Double Cluster. I think I probably look at this at every observing session I do, but I can’t remember seeing it so beautiful as it looked tonight. Simply breath-taking, and surely one of the finest deep-sky object in the northern hemisphere in these conditions. This night, the two clusters seemed to burst out the eyepiece. A myriad of bright stars, and there’s the ‘pawprint’ and ochre coloured star in the left (right) cluster. Glorious! The observation site in the daytime... I visited M71 in Sagitta. Some find this cluster underwhelming but it’s well worth visiting I think. At first view it’s a ghostly smudge, but further viewing reveals a pretty mottling of stars. I spent years looking for this in urban skies, perhaps that’s why I’m always so happy to see it out in the countryside? The Dumbell Nebula was also easily found just up to the left of the arrow Sagitta, the shape clearly definable. I saw quite a few globular clusters this night, but two pretty, sparse open clusters I always enjoy are M103 in Cassiopeia, and M29 in Cygnus. The former has a triangular shape, the latter I allways think of as an anvil shape. Both are very easy targets for star-hopping. Ursa Major was low, but it was testament to the great seeing conditions that M51 and its companion was easily found, and had observable structure. M101 also evident in the 10” mirror, but ghostly and faint. I spent some time with M81 and M82 (‘Bodes Galaxy’ and the ‘Cigar Galaxy’), and they were also easily observable in Robin’s 15x70 bins. In the bins, it was more apparent that M81 is the brighter of the two, (some books giving it a full mag brighter). These are lovely objects, and I struggled to find them initially in the dob, which I put down to Ursa Major being so low. It looks bigger, and I got a little confused with distances. We had summer and winter constellations tonight. Hercules was easily visible, and the Milky Way looked magnificent overhead. I took in M13, (wonderfully bright), and M92. The Wild Duck cluster was easily found to the right of the Scutum Star Cloud, and easily completely resolvable. This is getting to be one of my favourite objects, though the 10” mirror does tend to do it justice. We also saw this through Robin’s bins, and it was bright and structured and the contrast was lovely. With such good conditions, it’s always worth going for M33, the Whirlpool Galaxy. It always surprises me how big it is. It was easily found with my 10x50s, but the best view came from Robin’s bins which were so comfortable to view through on his parallelogram mount. It’s always surprising how big this is. Under Jupiter, in Capricorn is an 8th mag globular star cluster called M30, which I’d never found before, and seeing as we were in a slight valley, I thought it might be too low to find tonight. But in the bins, from Jupiter down, I was able to star hop down the four star diamond shape to a crescent of stars in Cap. Which kind of point to where the cluster is, and bingo! A quite small globular compared to M13, but it was very pretty and I expect much brighter for people nearer the equator. M30 is approx. 26,000 light years away. The seeing deteriorated somewhat with a slight mist, and dew on the eyepieces became problematic, but I stuck at it. Saturn showed no shimmering at all, despite its low altitude. This was thanks to the rainfall I assume. I used a 9mm eyepiece to hopefully find some moons. I sketched a triangle of ‘stars’ to the left of the planet around 9pm. These moons were viewable at high power and likely Rhea, Dione, Titan, and Iapetus. But I can’t confirm these because I neglected to note the exact time. So I need to be more exacting on the Saturnian lunar deal. I never miss the Ring Nebula (M57) during my summer observations, but I hardly ever visit M56, the globular cluster that’s so easy to find between Albereo and the stars of Lyra. It’s quite bright and very easy to find by star-hopping. Alberieo looked lovely as always, (though oddly I didn’t find the colours as striking as usual). The great thing about group observation sessions is – you can get other people’s opinions on objects. I love the Cygnus star HIP 99675 and its two ‘line of sight’ neighbors, because of the colours. I see (left to right in the reflector’s eyepiece), silver, gold and blue. Without telling them what I could see, I asked Robin and Duncan what colours they saw.. Robin, “Silver on the left, gold then blue” And Duncan.. “I can see Silver, gold and … blue”. So it’s not just my imagination! Such a pretty sight. All through the evening, Capella was shining brighter, and rising. And soon, there were the Pliades, Alderberran, The Hyades and the Twins Castor and Pollux. What a wonderful time to observe October is! The summer constellations of Corona Borealis, Bootes and Hercules can be seen heading westward, and the winter constellations rising in the east. We started with the Summer Triangle overhead, and at 2am Robin was taking pictures of Orion and M42. What a superb evening’s observations, which seemed very unlikely to even happen at 7pm as we were battered by rain, wind and overcast with 100% cloud cover. As Chuck Berry sang, “it goes to show you never can tell!”
  9. I'm wondering if - because of Mercury's close proximity to the Sun, and the changing angle of the north/south view - it might well be a fact that Mercury could be a morning object in the southern sky for the majority of the month, and a morning object in the north for the majority of that month. I might not be an observable morning object in the south, but technically, it appears above the horizon before the sun, in the same month when it's a morning object in the UK. But even so, it just doesn't seem right.
  10. My thoughts exactly! Both hemispheres spin in the same direction, so the order of appearance of planets would be the same. You'd just see them from different angles, and at different times. It's a pretty big typo if it is one, because it clearly says mercury is "glimpsed over the western horizon after sunset" in the southern sky in October.
  11. I've never worried about asking stupid questions on SL before, so I won't start now, (insert smiley here!) In October's Astronomy Now magazine (which arrived two days ago), it tells me Mercury is viewable from the UK next month at dawn, and highest on 24th Oct. Yet on the Southern Sky page, it says it's visible at dusk. I can't get my head round that. Venus is an 'evening star' in both north and south hemispheres in October, so why isn't Mercury?
  12. Cephus is doing my head in! Admittedly I was only mostly using 10×50 bins tonight, (albeit quality Opticrom bins), but you’d expect I could spot mag 7.7 nebula right overhead in astronomical darkness, from the rural society observing site seven miles from the city. But no, the ‘Iris Nebula’ (Caldwell 4) still eludes me. I can easily see the 6.8 mag star the nebulosity surrounds. But no nebula. And don’t get me started on the supposed deep sky object I found inside the ‘box’ of Cephus, I was all excited to look up what I’d found when I got home, and all I can find for that area is NGC 7139, a 13th mag planetary nebula. There’s no way I saw that through my bins. Back to the drawing board for king Cephus I think! I need to get the big guns out in Shropshire. Unleash that dob on this Cephus nightmare. And the constellation itself, by the way, is a [removed word] to find. It’s right up there, spinning round and seems to change direction every half hour. Yea, it’s a bit of a house shape, but it’s a house lying down, then standing up, and then it’s upside down. The circumpolar swine! Still, I did see M2 (the bright globular star cluster in Aquarius) for the first time at the observatory, so I get to make another entry in the society observation log. That’s 67 Messier objects catalogued at this site since we put the dome up. Although I got flustered with Cephus, I did have a smashing time navigating Cassiopeia, which moved into a nice dark spot around midnight, and I took in the clusters of M103, NGC 663 and NGC 654. The first two forming a nice ‘Orion’s belt’ threesome with the star Ruchbah. And M52, so easy to find and bright, by using the two right hand stars of the ‘W’ as pointers. Cool! And of course, the Perseus Double Cluster, this never disappoints. It's a treat in bins and scope alike. What else? Jupiter and Saturn were resplendent. Two moons to the right of Jupiter, and I have to say the Jovian image was sharper in my Opticroms than the Helios 15x70 bins I had mounted on the parallelogram mount. But the Helios certainly captured more light, (I did a Pepsi challenge with Mizar and the surrounding stars, and the Helios bins were better). M13 in Hercules, lovely and bright, and the cluster M71 in Sagitta, so easy to find. Ursa Major was low, and my efforts to spot M97, M108 and M101 were all to nought. I did manage to see M81 and M82, (Bode’s galaxy and the ‘cigar’ galaxy). But they were faint, and I had to use averted vision. But even so, looking at galaxies with only binoculars seven miles from the bright mucky skies of Wolverhampton isn’t to be sniffed at. And, of course, the Andromeda galaxy was easy to spot, as the square of Pegasus rose, and moved into the Wolves sky-glow. I tried to look for M33 (the Triangulum galaxy) but it was a waste of time with that sky glow. Silly me, I’d have been better off looking for Dodos swimming in the reservoir the other side of the hedge. For some reason, I’d forgotten where the Dumbbell Nebula was, exactly. I know it’s in Vulpecula, (which is one of the most pathetic of constellations). So I checked my maps, and by imagining a lazy ‘L’ shape from the easily findable Sagitta, there it was. No discernible dumbbell shape in the 10x50s, but it was unmistakable, and pleasingly bright. I’d given up with the Helios bins by this time, they’d misted over. M15, another fabulous globular was next. Star-hop from the dolphin, (if you’ve made it this far, you’ll no doubt know the dolphin). And again, use the arrow of Sagitta to find the fabulous asterism of the Coathanger, (Collinder 399). Any summer observation session that doesn’t visit this object is surely lacking. I noticed tonight my Webb Society Star Atlas (colour edition, no less!) lists the Coathanger as an open cluster. Neptune is following Jupiter and Saturn westward, and if I’d planned better I’d have taken a detailed star map with me. I’ve seen Neptune before in the 10×50’s, but it takes planning. I watched Arcturus vanish, and Capella rise. I heard some very strange animal sounds, and saw a few meteorites. I could see the Milky Way, but only through Cygnus. I’m going to re-check this NGC 7139 malarkey. I’m convinced I saw a DSO where that is, and it was brighter than 13th mag. That’s like Pluto magnitude, or something. Anyway, all good fun.
  13. The Wolverhampton Astronomical Society had a meteor-watch and we logged 42 Perseids from 10pm to about 1am. It was a real fun event, as people got quite excited when they spotted them. Four of them were very bright and left smoke trails. One ha a blue hue. It clouded over around 1am.
  14. This has been a fascinating thread for me, thanks for all the replies. These moons will be my next target when we have clear skies again.
  15. I do the same John. It's the only way you can be honest and know you're not lying to yourself. I'm 80% sure I saw Caldwell 4 - a reflection nebula in Cephus through the 15X70 Helios bins a few weeks ago, but my sketch of the star field didn't match the maps and apps later on when I checked. So I can't say I've seen it..
  16. Wow, I had no idea so many of Saturn's moons were visible John. As I say, I'm sure I must have read 'you can only see Titan' when I was getting into astronomy all those years ago, and I have somehow accepted it as fact and never bothered to look further into it. The Wolverhampton Astro Society has a 16" Dob, which I've used, but Saturn was too low to get the dob pointing in that direction, (we'd put it in a little dome, and it really wasn't suitable). I'd love to get that on Saturn one day soon!
  17. Thanks for that, most interesting. I bet I've been looking at these none-Titan moons for years, thinking them to be background stars. To be fair though, I've only just started using my 10" under dark skies. When I used this scope before, it was under urban skies. Sunday wasn't clear at all. I'm quite excited to re-visit Saturn with a view to cataloguing the moons in my observation book. Edit = here's my dob in the toilet tent. The tent has a door, but if the sky clears I just uproot the four tent pegs and the whole tent lifts off in seconds.
  18. I wouldn't be sure I'd seen Rhea if I hadn't checked Stellarium. Its position matched the faint 'star' I saw and sketched. There's often a diagram of Saturn's moons with their month long locations in either Sky at Night magazine or Astronomy Now. But I tend not to rely on those as they can be open to a little interpretation. Stellarium gives Rhea a mag of 10.3 on the night I clocked it.
  19. I had a brief spell of clear skies whilst camping in Shropshire on Sunday night. I had my 10" Dob set up inside my new 'toilet tent' which meant I could whip the tent off whenever the clouds cleared. It's a good system, I just uproot the four tent pegs and bingo. When I looked at Saturn, I made a quick sketch of what I thought was Titan and a, quite faint, background star, nearer to Saturn than Titan. When I checked Stellarium earlier today, it suggested I'd seen Rhea. Which surprised and pleased me. All these years of looking at Saturn I'm ashamed to say I've not paid much attention to the moons. So my question here is, which Saturn moons have you seen, and what scope did you use to see them? And what resources do you use to recognise them? I think some of my early astro books pretty much say only Titan is visible in small telescopes. I think I must have read that years ago and took it on board, and not bothered looking for Saturn's moons. Which is daft on my part, because I love tracking the Jovian moons.
  20. I was the same with M71. For years I almost believed it wasn't there. It was only when I started observing from rural sites did I find it. It's a globular in name only really, it's very loose and looks like a not-very-bright open cluster. Because it's so close the Sagitta it's easy to locate, (I always star-hop to find stuff, I don't use a go-to). Galaxy M101 was another object it took me ages to see. Ironically, after looking for it for years in a telescope, it was the 10x50 bins that located it in a very dark field in the Shropshire hills.
  21. I've missed out a few objects I see. M71 in Sagitta is so easy to find, I always visit it these days. I always think it's a globular that looks like an open cluster. And the two planetary nebula in that part of the sky, M27 and M57. The latter was really, really bright. The words 'faint fuzzy' don't belong anywhere near this object in the 10" mirror. I almost think a smaller aperture scope might show the dumbbell shape better possibly. The edges are less defined at bigger power, as the fainter outer parts of the nebula are bought into view. Glad you like the van Jiggy. It's an old 1970's van I bought for a few hundred. I renovated it, and use it for music festivals and astro weekends.
  22. Had a good session on Saturday night with the 10” reflector on a dobsonian mount. One of the highlights was the unexpected Jovian shadow transit of Ganymede. From around 1am to 2am I watched the shadow of the moon travel across the disc from left to right, (left to right in eyepiece). I saw later the transit was discussed in the July Sky at Night magazine, but I missed reading it, so it was a nice surprise. There are more shadow transits later this month. Deep sky stuff; I started off in Sagittarius with one of my favourites that never gets very high in the UK, M8 the Lagoon Nebula, which also has open cluster NGC 6530 in the same field of view. It took a few minutes for the nebulosity to ‘grow’, but I managed to make a sketch. This is one of the most distinctive deep sky objects. A failure tonight was the globular cluster M4 in Scorpius. I’ve never seen it, and still haven’t, though I suspect I wasn’t looking in the right place. After checking my Glyn Jones Cambridge Messier book, I was looking too far to the left I think. I’m pretty sure the 10” mirror should have picked up this 6.4 mag cluster, despite its low altitude. Back to Sagittarius, and Near M8 are globular clusters M22 and M28, which were easily found, and both markedly different is size and contrast. M22 is smaller in the eyepiece, bright and compact, and M28 much larger and ghostly. With Capricorn so high, I was able to make my first observation notes on Messier objects M72 and M73. M72 is a loose, quite open globular cluster, 62,000 LY away. Easy to find by star-hopping from Capricorn (though M72 and M73 are technically in Aquarius). M73 is a four star asterism, and a quirk of the Messier list, (like M40 in Ursa Major). Because I was looking mostly towards the south, it was an evening for bright globular clusters. M13 (Hercules), M5 (Aquarius) , all really bright, contrasty and resolvable. M11 – The Wild Duck cluster is one of the Summer’s jewels. When doing a 10x50 Opticrom bino tour of the Scutum area I noticed a bright patch below it, which I found was the cluster M26. Not often visited by me, and a little underwhelming in the scope. A better binocular object? Galaxies are a challenge in nautical darkness, but I managed observations of M101 (the Pinwheel) and M94 in Canes Venatici, which was surprisingly bright. Around 2.45 the Milky Way disappeared, almost within minutes! The Sun was making its way towards the horizon and I just managed some binocular observations of M31 and the rising Pleiades open cluster (M45) in an adjoining field, rising in the east.
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