DavidR100

What a marvellous project! Using your own galaxy observations to build up a picture of such a large scale structure is a splendid and novel (to me at least) idea.

Can I suggest that you continue in the same vein - observing yet more galaxies along the Great Wall and perhaps plotting your observations on the map in your post.  It would be fascinating to see if you could continue the exercise for other (neighbouring) large scale structures.

Out of interest, I checked my own observations and I have seen ten of those Great Wall galaxies, though unfortunately I didn't realise it at the time 🙁

Keep it up!

On 07/12/2023 at 14:02, wvbirder said:

David,

  I really enjoyed reading reading your post! Our travels through this hobby/obsession are similar. I've lived in Maryland and West Virginia for most of my life. I started keeping track of what I was seeing in July of 1988 with a 10" Meade SCT. I fell in love with galaxies with their subtle differences if one took the time to look deeper. I went to a couple of star parties in the late 1980's and saw a new generation of lighter weight Dobsonian's and got aperture fever. I've owned several dobs since that time ranging from 18" to 24" (truss type) and my current big scope is an Obsession UC 22", a retirement present. I, like you went to MS Access and wrote my own database and reporting programs using the built-in Visual Basic and queries using SQL. I created my database tables to be compatible with Chris Mariott's SkyMap Pro (no longer being upgraded) which I still use today as my primary program. I can import my observations into SkyMapPro.

I took some breaks during the last 35 years to chase other interests but came back to astronomy 5 years ago. My first 1,797 observations we're all "star hopped" but with the Obsession everything (2,213 more objects) since 2018 has been GoTo (UC 22) or PushTo (with a Starmaster 11" f/5.4). Total number of galaxies logged thus far is 3,367.

I completed the Herschel catalog in June, 2023, a 35 year project (The base liine object list was via the Astronomical League Herschel Society and I've also referenced Mark Bratton's book and Wolfgang Steinicke's eweb site for additional targets). I didn't know I had started my Herschel journey with NGC 891 on 7-31-1988. I continue to seek out more faint fuzzies and am working on the Hickson groups and other galaxies that Lewis Swift discovered. I know I won't be using the big scope forever as age is becoming a factor but I'll enjoy it while I can and then revert to a smaller scope to carry on.

Best of luck in your on going adventures and clear skies,

 Matt Orsie - Hedgesville, WV 

Matt,

What a marvellous 35 year adventure, with an impressive galaxy total to show for it - so far!  You are living my dreams somewhat, with your big Obsession and all those clear, dark skies.  Still we just have to make the best of what we have.

Fingers crossed you continue to venture into additional catalogues for some time to come and that the smaller scope (about which I know exactly what you mean) continues to stay under wraps.

David

Mark, It was good to see your observation record and the graphics.

My records show that I saw NGC 4384 a couple of months later on 19th April from my favourite North Wales site.  I also recorded the shape as circular, but for me it was faint (two levels brighter than averted vision).  It was a good clear sky at a dark location.  Apologies for finding this before getting a chance to use your charts!

I was more fortunate with the weather; a strong wind on arrival obligingly completely died down once I had set up; the sky stayed cloud free and my equipment dew free. For the first time since the autumn the ground was dry, so no muddy shoes.  It was a bit nippy though - the car roof was frosted when the session finished.  The session felt like hard work with a fair number of very faint galaxies, but with 28 sightings altogether, of which 24 were "first timers", I was ultimately pretty happy!  All galaxies were within a few degrees of Megrez, delta Ursae Majoris.

A great haul related with enthusiasm!

14 hours ago, Mr Magoo said:

An inspiring read, and an awesome celestial journey. Star hopping your way to 1000 galaxies with an atlas and a push to telescope, surely the most rewarding way to achieve such a goal.

 

Thank you.  Even now, the process of getting a galaxy into the field of view is probably more satisfying than the sight itself.  

Dear All,

I would really like to thank you for your kind and generous comments; I actually found them quite humbling (which isn't really like me!).  I guess there's something especially significant about praise from peers.  But don't let me go on! 

The comments were a particularly welcome read last night as I sat in the car (at my customary north Wales spot) waiting for the clouds to clear (which they didn't).  With the sky barely exiting nautical twilight (according to timeanddate.com), common sense would say that galaxies would stay merged with the background sky.  However, not long ago I had a surprisingly successful session seeing 18 galaxies in Hercules and Corona Borealis right at the end of May.  So I thought, why not have another try?

Thanks again for your comments and I'm very gratified that my post was of interest.

David

6 hours ago, maw lod qan said:

1000 galaxies, amazing.

Well done!

I'm someone who really wants to believe there is someone out there looking back at us.

Just imagine all the stories that could be told in those galaxies, far, far, away!

In the early days I used to wonder if "someone" was looking at the Milky Way while I was looking at "their" galaxy.  A sobering, but exciting thought!  Thanks for reminding me 🙂

22 hours ago, mdstuart said:

Excellent achievement. Your journey sounds very like my own.

Really enjoyed reading your post.

I would love to see your spreadsheet to cross reference to my own. I can send you the result. It might yield a list of objects for both of us to try for once the dark skies return.

Mark

Mark,

Many thanks for your kind words.  Please let me think about your proposal.  Your contact URL (http://www.bristolweather.org.uk/astronomy) doesn't seem to work; are you contactable at Bristol Astro Soc?

David

It has been a long held ambition that even quite recently appeared to be slipping out of reach.  However, two weeks ago, as I gave up peering for the elusive galaxy NGC 6295 in Draco and navigated about 10 minutes west to NGC 6258, I tried to ignore the competing feelings of rising excitement and impending disappointment, for I was on the cusp of my 1000th galaxy sighting.  After a few seconds of concentration, sure enough, the image of a small, very faint circular fuzz started to form in my eye.  I estimated its brightness, size and shape, its distance and orientation from a nearby brightish star and then recorded my observation.  My 1000th recorded galaxy was in the bag.

It's tempting to say that this journey started many decades ago with my childhood interest in the night sky;  I had even joined the Junior Astronomical Society.  However, my fascination with galaxies in particular dates back to 2012 when I was struck by the possibility of seeing an object at a mind blowing distance with just binoculars from my back garden in suburban Manchester.  I bought those binoculars and in November, after a few unsuccessful star hopping sessions (via Cassiopea, believe it or not!), a faint Andromeda Galaxy came into view.

These days I observe through an Explore Scientific 16" Dobsonian Gen II with a Tele Vue Delos eyepiece and think nothing of making the drive of well over an hour to a favourite spot in North Wales (dark green on the map at darkskyfinder.com).  Under a truly clear sky, the NGC galaxies marked on Uranometria invariably come into view - though sometimes not without a little effort, as already described.  This can be a highly satisfying experience, and it has to be, to make up for all those fruitless trips when the skies turned out oblivious to the weather forecast.  Well over half my observations have been made over the last 5 years with that equipment at one or other of my other favourite spots in the area (the others are shown as light green and olive at darkskyfinder.com).

Going back to the early days, the taste of Andromeda stimulated an appetite for more, and thanks to sound advice from Peter and George at my local telescope shop, Opticstar (in Sale, south Manchester), I bought a Sky-Watcher Explorer 130P and the big red Messier Marathon book.  I quickly graduated from the back garden to a darker site on the north Cheshire plain (dark brown at darkskyfinder.com) and by the end of summer 2013 I had logged all but 18 of the Messiers and taken the 130P to its limit.  A Sky-Watcher Explorer 200P came to the rescue, and all of a sudden, galaxy M74 in Pisces came within easy reach.  By the summer of 2014 I had completed the Messier list and I was after a new challenge.

Steve O'Meara's Herschel 400 Observing Guide looked like the answer, but I didn't take to it.  After some time in limbo, I remembered what attracted me back to this hobby and by chance I came across the Sky & Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas and I soon had my future mapped out - to see as many of those small red ellipses (galaxies) as possible and record details of my observations (for future reference).

During 2014 I got itchy feet and made several reconnaissances looking for darker sites within "reasonable" reach.  I scoured maps for suitable locations and took a daytime tour of North Wales with my 15 year old daughter to check out sites of interest and identified one that I would return to every now and then until it became my "go to" site in 2017.  A location in north Shropshire (seemingly better than the yellow at darkskyfinder.com) also proved to be a well-located dark spot.  I ventured as far east as North Lincolnshire (yellow at darkskyfinder.com), and although I did return once, it was a little too distant even for me and not really worth the effort.

Just as completing the Messier list seemed an impossible feat at the outset, so did exhausting the galaxies observable from my latitude in the S & T Pocket Sky Atlas.  Nevertheless, by early 2020 that was the case, with getting on for 400 faint fuzzies logged.  Meanwhile, in late 2015 I upgraded to my first Dobsonian, a Sky-Watcher Skyliner 250PX, which proved to be probably my favourite scope and which is still my "grab and go".  It was thanks to the 250PX that I more or less completed the S & T Atlas.

I had reached another turning point in my pursuit of galaxies, and which we to go?  Back in 2014 I had the foresight to buy a copy of the Uranometria 2000.0 Deep Sky Atlas All Sky Edition from Opticstar just before they went online only (my other local astronomy shop in Stockport went the same way at more or less the same time).  It was to this hefty volume, with over 25,000 galaxies that I turned my attention.  

The time also felt right to upgrade my scope, so having been completely satisfied with all my Sky-Watcher purchases it seemed natural to go for the "next one up" - the Skyliner 300P FlexTube.  Unfortunately we didn't get along as it felt to have all the downsides of a large scope and few of the advantages.  It was big and heavy, needed collimating every time before use (I don't believe I ever needed to collimate my 250PX in the field), the primary took a while to cool down and the secondary seemed particularly disposed to misting up (even with a shroud).  Whilst the 300P could see a little "deeper" than the 250PX, it just didn't seem worth the bother.  I considered stepping up to the 350P, but that was really bulky and heavy; the deciding factor against was that the base wouldn't fit through a doorway.

If I wanted bigger, then a new paradym was needed, and it came in the shape of a truss-structure Dobsonian.  The scope type breaks down into relatively manageable parts, making bigger apertures a practical proposition for someone like me who observes a car journey away; unfortunately these benefits come at a price.

I had the great pleasure of visiting David Lukehurst in Nottingham and examining an 18" he had just completed.  I considered an Obsession and even a somewhat-out-of-my-price-range SkyVision.  I finally I went for the Explore Scientific, a "budget" truss Dob, which was great value at a sale price of "just" £2000.  This was a decision I have not regretted.  In the unlikely event that I should upgrade again, I'm promising myself a close look at one of David's 20" Dobs.

The combination of the 16", trusty Sky-Watcher right-angled erecting finderscope, dark North Wales skies and detail of Uranometria and were a match made in heaven.  Under those dark skies, the finderscope shows all the stars in Uranometria - it's eerily like Uranometria IS the sky - and the 16" with faultless 14 mm Delos does the rest.

So why am I still motivated to hunt down galaxies after all these years?  Well, I continue to be captivated by the sight of such phenomenally distant objects.  Although there are many magnificent images of galaxies on the web (including SGL, of course!), for me it just isn't the same as seeing photons at the end of their multi-million year journey with my own eyes. Whilst many galaxies fit the same visual type of small, faint elliptical fuzzies, there are the occasional variations, so there's the excitement of not knowing what the next FOV will bring. Two (or even more) relatively conspicuous galaxies in the same FOV is another gratifying sight, and two weeks previously I was treated to three such pairings in one session, when targeting Bootes.  The first was faint NGC 5696 and very faint NGC 5697 half a FOV apart.  Then faint NGC 5730 and very faint NGC 5731, only 1/16 FOV apart. An additional feature was that both galaxies were "twinned" with a star, just to their west.  Finally were faint NGC 5784 and quite faint NGC 5787 which were separated by a third of an FOV.  Navigating to the next galaxy through the finderscope then finding it spot on in the middle of the eyepiece still brings a warm feeling of satisfaction.  Note that all my equipment is manually driven and all navigation is by star hopping through the finderscope having referenced my hardcopy atlas.

I now have getting on for 2000 observations, which are stored in an Excel spreadsheet.  That's a lot of data to make sense of.  I ended up writing a bunch of scripts in Perl; a compact, powerful but quirky language, to analyse and report useful information - such as the number of galaxies I have seen.  Snippets from three of the reports are shown below. I looked initially at using Access as for storing and querying the data, then moved on to an SQL database (I had prior experience of writing SQL) and went some way designing and populating the database.  After a while it felt like too heavy-a-duty solution; nevertheless it was a satisfying job and I might return to it one day.  

So what of the future? Having achieved the goal of 1000 galaxies, despite the vagaries of the weather in north of England (and Wales) and (I imagine) decreasing light sensitivity with age, I ask myself, why not continue and go for 1500 and then 2000 galaxies?  I can't find a good reason not to.  On another tack, whilst there are numerous lists around on DSOs in general and galaxies in particular, I feel that there could be a gap in the market for a list of galaxies not only observable from UK but actually observed from the UK.

I hope this was an interesting read.

Here are extracts from some of my Perl reports:

1. Top 10 constellations by number of non-Messier galaxies seen:

Ursa Major: 286
Canes Venatici: 105
Virgo: 87
Draco: 68
Lynx: 68
Bootes: 62
Leo: 47
Coma Berenices: 34
Pegasus: 29
Leo Minor: 23

2. Totals of non-Messier galaxies seen, by brightness:

0 Very bright
0 Bright
15 Medium
8 Just below medium
79 Below medium
132 Quite faint
338 Faint
334 Very faint 
65 Averted vision

3. One report lists all non-Messier galaxies observed for each constellation, by brightness.  Here's the extract for Leo Minor (all are NGCs except where stated):

23 galaxies observed and seen: 
  Medium (1): 3245, 
  Just below medium (1): 2859, 
  Below medium (2): 3021, 3294, 
  Faint (8): 2955, 3003, 3254, 3277, 3344, 3414, 3486, 3504, 
  Very faint (10): 2965, 2971, 3012, 3232, 3235, 3265, 3395, 3430, 3432, IC 2500, 
  Averted vision (1): 3099, 
2 galaxies observed and not seen: 3013, 3245A, 

On 24/05/2023 at 23:12, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

Just got home from salsa lessons, to a beautifully clear sky. I printed out an AAVSO chart for SN2023ixf in M101, and set up the Celestron C8. After a quick star-hop, I got to the right area and could clearly spot the supernova, even though the galaxy itself was very hard, even in averted vision. There was no doubt about the supernova being visible, roughly on a par with a mag 11.1 star in the same FOV, clearly fainter than a mag 10.5 star. Pleased with my 17th supernova catch.

Well done! Supernovas are really cool and unfortunately something I have neglected in my pursuit of galaxies.  I need to make amends. My only sighting was SN 2014J in M82 - can't believe it was 9 years ago.

The final piece of the jigsaw (I hope!) is to identify what I saw through the eyepiece that might have been NGC 5805.  

I re-observed last Sunday (21st May) and the position of the faint fuzz perfectly matched the position of the double star shown highlighted below in stellarium-web.  I couldn't resolve the faint double, I could only see nebulosity. 

Actually, this is quite a good fit to my original sketch which shows the angle subtended by the lines to the unknown object and the one joining the three galaxies as more than 90 degrees, whereas the angle subtended for the galaxy marked as 5805 (but which isn't 5805 😃) is less than 90 degrees.

On 18/05/2023 at 22:49, mdstuart said:

I checked my notes and I could only see the three brightest galaxies.

There are a lot of issues like this over naming in the older catalogues. Some have even written books explaining all the issues.

Well done on spotting the galaxy regardless of its name!

Mark

I still had a niggling doubt as to the correct location of 5805, so with the help of some links that I had squirrelled away a few years ago (probably from SGL or Cloudy Nights) I investigated further.

As a reminder, these are the coordinates I had already found for 5805:

                         RA                 Dec
Uranometria     14:57:11.6     49:37:43    
theskylive          14:57:11       49:37:40
stellarium-web  14:56:39.9    49:33:13.8

So stellarium-web has a different position from Uranometria and theskylive.

My investigation started at the beginning with J. L. E. Dreyer's original catalogue of 1888 [1] which had 5805 with an RA of 14.52.31 and Dec of 39.47.5.  5804 had the same RA, with Dec of 39.45.3, i.e. Dreyer recorded 5805 2.2 mins south of 5804.

The Revised New General Catalog (RNGC) by Jack W. Sulentic and William G. Tifft, published in 1973, was the first prominent modern-day attempt to correct errors in the NGC catalogue.  I was unable to find this catalogue online.

A subsequent clean up attempt of the NGC catalogue by Roger Sinnott resulted in NGC2000.0 published in 1988. An online version of this catalogue was created by SEDS (Students for the Exploration and Development of Space) [2] which gives RA of 14:55.9 and Dec of 49:43 for 5805.

Next should have been the catalogue from the NGC/IC Project, whose aim was to check and update the original catalogues, and was developed in the 1990s and 2000s, but there is currently no public access to its database [3].  However, Steve Gottlieb, who was part of that project, has published a draft restoration of the catalogue [4] which gives RA of 14:57:11.7 and Dec of 49:37:43.  

Steve, one of the most prolific of modern day observers, has recorded his own observations for every NGC; the coordinates in his notes for 5805 [5] are RA of 14:57:11.6 and Dec 49:37:44.  Steve also includes historical notes and modern catalogue discrepancy errors, which tellingly say that 5805 was miss-identified in the Revised New General Catalog as PGC 53381 and this error propagated into several reputable catalogues and atlases including NGC2000 and the first version of Uranometria 2000.0.  This is one of multiple mistakes that Steve pointed out in the RNGC.

Harold Corwin was one of Steve's colleagues on the NGC/IC project; his forte is the precise positions of objects and gathering historical notes on them, so Harold's data would be expected to carry significant weight.  In Harold's own NGC catalogue [6], he gives an RA of 14:57:11.9 and Dec of 49:37:41 for 5805.

Wolfgang Steinicke also participated in the NGC/IC Project, and he has since created his own catalogue, the Revised New General Catalogue and Index Catalogue which is based on the NGC/IC but contains many additional objects, 13957 in all [7]. For 5805, RA is 14:57:11.7 and Dec is 49:37:43. Wolfgang also produced a Historic NGC/IC catalog [8], which interestingly contains the exactly the same coordinates for 5805 as his Revised catalogue.

Conclusion

Here are the position data for NGC 5805 that have just been uncovered:

                                                            RA                Dec
1. Steve Gottlieb's draft restoration    
of the NGC/IC Project catalogue:        14:57:11.7    49:37:43
2. Steve Gottlieb's own observations:  14:57:11.6   49:37:44
3. Harold Corwin's catalogue:              14:57:11.9   49:37:41
4. Wolfgang Steinicke's catalogues:     14:57:11.7   49:37:43
5. Revised New General Catalogue:     N/A             N/A
6. SEDS online NGC2000.0:                  14:55.9        49:43

The NGC2000.0 data is an outlier being 2 mins in RA different from the rest. Since NGC2000.0 is based on RNGC and Steve Gottlieb explained that the RNGC contained a mistake regarding the identity of 5805, the position of 5805 given by NGC2000 is expected to be incorrect. The likely coordinates for 5805 are therefore RA 14:57:11.7 and Dec 49:37:43, give or take a few seconds.  Dreyer, in the original NGC catalogue, placed 5805 2.2 minutes due south of 5804. According to Steve Gottlieb's draft restoration of the NGC/IC Project catalogue, 5804 has RA of 14:57:06.8 and Dec of 49:40:08, which would place 5805 at approximately RA of 14:57:06.8 and 49:37:56, which is a very good match with the Gottlieb/Corwin/Steinicke coordinates.

Returning to the original post, these results vindicate Uranometria and theskylive and show the data from stellarium-web to be in error. The object I thought was NGC 5805 must have been something else.

Mark,  I'm sure you are already aware of much of the information I have presented here, but I hope that this very potted summary of the development of the NGC catalogue and the list of references below will be of interest to readers.  I certainly found this an illuminating journey of (re-)discovery.  

References:
[1] "A database of actual optical scans of the original New General Catalogue and Index Catalogues compiled and edited by J.L.E. Dreyer. The volume which was scanned, is a reprint of the original catalogue dated 1971". http://ngcicproject.observers.org/ngciccat.htm
[2] SEDS online version of NGC2000.0: https://spider.seds.org/ngc/ngc.html
[3] NGC/IC Project catalog: http://ngcicproject.observers.org/pubdb.htm
[4] Steve Gottlieb's draft restoration of the NGC/IC Project catalogue: http://ngcicproject.observers.org/NGC/
[5] Steve Gottlieb's own data: https://www.astronomy-mall.com/Adventures.In.Deep.Space/NGC 5001-6000.html
[6] Harold Corwin's data: http://haroldcorwin.net/ngcic/ngconly.txt
[7] Wolfgang Steinicke's Revised New General Catalogue and Index Catalogue (look for "Revised NGC/IC Data"): http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/ngcic/ngcic_e.htm
[8] Wolfgang Steinicke's Historic NGC/IC (look for "The Historic NGC/IC is available here"): http://www.klima-luft.de/steinicke/ngcic/Expl_Hist_NGCIC.htm

17 hours ago, mdstuart said:

I checked my notes and I could only see the three brightest galaxies.

There are a lot of issues like this over naming in the older catalogues. Some have even written books explaining all the issues.

Well done on spotting the galaxy regardless of its name!

Mark

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your feedback.  I now remember reading online a few years ago about disagreements, some of which seemed quite personal, between authorities on the naming of some NGCs.  

It's a sobering thought that the well known atlases and planetarium software should just be treated as "guides" even for the long established catalogues.

David

On Monday night (15th May) I was observing galaxies in northern Bootes, using the All Sky Edition of Uranometria 2000.0 as my trusty reference. My equipment was a 16" Dob with 14mm EP giving an FOV of around 30 minutes and a magnification of 130.  I was observing from a pretty dark location in North Wales.

Less than 2 degrees NW of star 47 is a quadruple of galaxies: NGCs 5794, 5797, 5804 and 5805.  These are all roughly  10 minutes from a star which is prominent in the eyepiece.  

With the star more or less centred in the FOV, the galaxies were faint but immediately apparent.  When I compared the observed shape of the galaxy group with Uranometria, I realised that something was amiss, namely I observed NGC 5805 to the west of the star, whereas the atlas showed it to the east.

I checked theskylive.com, which agreed with Uranometria. 

I then checked stellarium-web.org which showed the pattern that I observed, with NGC 5805 west of the star, whilst the galaxy to the east was actually PGC 214349.  Neither theskylive nor Uranometria showed PGC 214349.

So it appears that both Uranometria and theskylive.com mixed up NGC 5805 with PGC 214349.

This little piece of detective work appeared to exonerate my observations - which I was clearly pleased about - but it found fault with Uranometria, which I had always regarded as "the bible".

What does anyone else think of this mix up?

Has anyone else come across this case of mistaken identity with NGC 5805?

Attached are:

- Scruffy sketch from my observations log showing the galaxies with "x"s and the nearby star. To see in the same orientation as the other images, flip from right to left and top to bottom.
- Image from stellarium-web.org with NGC 5805 highlighted in red.
- Image of snippet of page 36 (left) of Uranometria showing the galaxy group and "NGC 5805" highlighted.
- Image from theskylive.com with "NGC 5805" circled in green.

5 hours ago, Leo S said:

Yes, that is essentially it. Ice crystals/moisture reflecting sunlight. It's similar to NLCs, albeit the source is different.

NLCs - Noctilucent Clouds (I had to look it up).

Here's a quote from the Wikipedia article on NLCs: "They are most often observed during the summer months from latitudes between ±50° and ±70°. Too faint to be seen in daylight, they are visible only when the observer and the lower layers of the atmosphere are in Earth's shadow, but while these very high clouds are still in sunlight."

That description fits our situation very well.

Further down the article: "In August 2014, a SpaceX Falcon 9 also caused noctilucent clouds over Orlando, Florida after a launch".

How the pieces fit together.

Leo S - you know some stuff!

3 hours ago, Leo S said:

The clouds of gas these events generate are not self-luminous, and would not be visible if they were not illuminated by sunlight.

While this particular event was a surreal experience to behold, it slightly pales in comparison compared to others, like this launch for example:

 

Probably the leading authority on these type of events is James Oberg, who is an ex-NASA employee. Among other things, his report on the "Norway Spiral" incident is worth a look if these type of phenomena interest you.

Can you be sure the "point of light" you observed was not a meteor? Assuming it was not just an ordinary satellite too..

Well I did say I wasn't an expert!  I know a little more now though, thanks.

Next time I'll know to just momentarily salute the passing space vehicle and then resume my galaxy hunting.

From the Twitter link supplied by Leo S it would appear to be a deorbit burn.  I'm no expert, but it's easier to imagine hot exhaust gases generating light rather than cold dumped gas doing so.

Leo S's link to the DPREVIEW forum contained an interesting link to CENAP, a German site for registration of unknown phenomena in the sky (AKA UFOs, but I guess they have a bad rap).  Before searching Stargazerslounge I unsuccessfully googled for a UK version of CENAP.  The nearest I could find were sites for reporting meteors and fireballs, which interestingly is where Leo S is coming from, though his useful links were in a different direction!

I now suspect that orbiting crafts/rockets/stages, without plumes, have accounted for several unexplained phenomena I have seen over the years - typically a surprisingly bright point of light (to the naked eye) travelling in a straight line across the sky at an approximately constant speed.

Sounds like what I saw - a faintish disc of light about 2 degrees across (fingertip width) that travelled north from the vicinity of Polaris through the eastern side of Perseus before it disappeared over the horizon, taking about 3 minutes from 00:07 to 00:10.  Looking through binoculars I saw a central bright dot surrounded by a halo filled with fainter light.  Viewed from North Wales.

At around 2 degrees across, the light disc was 3 or 4 times the diameter of the full moon, and easily the biggest night time celestial light source I can remember seeing, excluding the Milky Way and Aurora Borealis!

Thanks Leo S for the explanation, video and links.

This is my first "deorbit burn" in countless hours of night sky observing.  Bet I see another next time out!  At least I'll not be spooked...

Well, Trevor, I'll give you a prize!  

Your image, complete with the 4 Galilean moons, reflects my Christmas Eve observations through my 10" F/4.7 scope with 14mm, 72deg FOV EP. When I told my non-astronomer brother that I saw the moons in a line pointing slightly south of Saturn, he didn't believe me.  This was on the basis of a NASA image which showed the moons in a line at right angles to the Jupiter - Saturn line 3 days before at the time of the Great Conjunction. A little research showed me that the orbital periods of those moons is quite short so it was anyone's guess where they would be on Christmas Eve.  I pointed this out to my brother and also showed him your image - undeniable evidence.  

So it's definitely a prize from me!

David

On 16/02/2020 at 01:50, timwetherell said:

2018 I believe, it's been raining here most of 2019 

Just as I thought.  So it's not just me for whom 2019 was a damp squib!

What good news!  Many thanks for sharing your fascinating observations/notes/sketches.  As if the lack of Dec wasn't enough, you had an observatory roof to contend with!

However you were lucky to get the right conditions at a time and date when the targets were pretty much at their highest.

Was your success last year or 2018? 

On 03/09/2017 at 14:48, Stu said:

It's from SkySafari David, great app. I'm at 51.5 North.

And over two years later...

Yep, M22 is a relatively high southerly Messier and quite conspicuous due to its size.   M7 and M6 are somewhat lower - in fact your SkySafari image appears to show M7 scraping the horizon, and that's at a lattitude 1.5 degrees less than mine.

M69 and M70 that Tim was still hoping to see are as low-lying as M6 and M7 but much smaller and fainter thus posing a real challenge. I've just asked him if he's had any success with them over the last two years.

On 03/09/2017 at 12:28, timwetherell said:

Yes, i think you're right. But i'll definitely give it another bash next year

 

Over two years on ....  I was wondering if you had any success with M69 and M70?

1 hour ago, Stu said:

It's from SkySafari David, great app. I'm at 51.5 North.

Thanks for the info.  I have read a popular post on SkySafari so was going to look into it, though I have so far been very happily paper-based. Not forgetting my plastic planisphere which, although low tech, generally does the job. 

1 hour ago, Stu said:

I guess it depends where you are. M22 still at 13 degrees by 10pm for me. With a good southern horizon it is still doable.

What software is this output from, Stu? Also, what is your latitude, as I can't make it out from the image?