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Reading everyone's reports of such a super night inspired me to wrap up warm (think polar explorer here) and drive up onto the South Downs above Winchester last night. I arrived on site at just after nine and the cloud having cleared, as promised by the Met Office cloud cover map, revealed a pristine sky above about thirty degrees. Orion was stunning to the SE and part of a glittering path through Taurus, Persues and Cassiopeia. Even before my eyes were dark adapted I could easily see the Double Cluster and M31 with AV, later these plus the rising Beehive stood direct vision. As I unpacked the gear, a very bright yellow fireball crossed through the lower end of Ursa Major, on and down to the NW, disappearing from view behind winter trees - a cracking start! It was very cold, setting up left me with numb fingers and although I keep the Mak in a cold part of the house and had popped it outside in the backpack half an hour before heading out views were very scruffy for the first twenty minutes or so as things acclimatised to icebox level. Having carefully levelled the tripod I started my normal North Level alignment and encountered the same glitch that started two nights ago - having set to N & level, instead of slewing to Sirius the mount tracked down a couple of degrees and then stopped. Hmm.. I had assumed this was previously the result of a poorly charged power tank and made sure batteries were full tonight but it appears to be a repeatable glitch (have since loaded the latest version of Synscan and note that North Level is no longer an option, shame as its been very accurate for the last two years!). Switching to a three star alignment the mount behaved itself as I centred Sirius, Aldebaran, and Pollux with the Baader Zoom at 188x. Began with a look at Castor, lovely twin headlights & checked the GoTo looking accurate for a short hop, Mak views starting to settle down. Then switched to a Baader Hyperion 24mm, 68 degree with a Neodymium filter and hopped to M35 - stunning, filled with lanes of stars & remembered to look for NGC 2158 nestling at its side and sure enough there its was. Then on round to M42, the mount now landing things plumb in the centre. Stunning level of contrast in the gas cloud and a real sense of stars shining from within it in 3D - I tore myself away to keep hopping round toward my main targets for the night but promised myself a proper look later. A quick look at the Pleiades, looking fab even in the finder, and then on to M31 to get my eye in on something fuzzy before searching for fainter targets. The Mak 127's 1 degree field of view makes taking in the whole of M31 a panning task - it was as good last night as I've seen it, M32 and M110 easily picked out and just maybe a gradation in the outer nebulosity hinting at a dust lane. On then to the main order of business and I centred on Delta Ceti as a waypoint to M77 (The Squid Galaxy for some reason...). A word about hunting down objects with GoTo, when I bought a GoTo system I naively expected to be able to zip from target to target without too much hunting about, and this can certainly be the case with bright features in the widefield ST80, its great fun. I quickly realised however than when looking for objects at the margin of visibility in the narrow field Mak, being plonked without reference in an unknown starfield is deeply disorientating, and unless the target is immediately apparent (as many of the Messier objects are not with this aperture) you can spend a lot of time lost in space, unsure whether you've located the object or not. I like to find the nearest decently bright star, something that's going to define the locale as a reference point and work out from there. As such GoTo becomes a shortcut to a definite start point for star or (in the case of Virgo/Coma region), galaxy-hops. In this case I had plugged Delta Ceti, Mag 4 into SynScan before heading out - M77 lies roughly half a degree to the East. Having centred on the star I made the short hop to M77 and was delighted to immediately see a directly visible core with some circular nebulosity surrounding in AV. Amazing as I've hunted in vain for this one a couple of times. "Got the little blighter!" I said out loud, which was weird as there was no one to hear and its not a phrase I'd normally use! I spent a decent amount of time taking in M77 and enthusiasm thus buoyed, slewed to Eta Piscium the marker star for M74, The Phantom Galaxy, which lies about a degree NE. After 15 minutes or so of uncertain peering it became clear that The Phantom would remain so tonight. Maybe I was seeing something but then I could look at the surrounding faint stars and make each a candidate based on very slight haze around them, so no, not counting this as seen. I have generally found face on Spirals the hardest objects to pick out and this one was no exception. On to M109 in Ursa Major, another subject of much fruitless peering in the past. Its not difficult to find where it allegedly lies, within a Mak-field South of Phecda/Phad on the bowl of the Plough. I centred on the bright star then dropped it just above the FoV, and after giving myself 10 minutes or so to really look I was able to see.... nothing that I could remotely identify as a galaxy. Slightly disheartened and feeling the cold, I centred on Edasich (Iota Draconis), for the 2 degree or so hop to M102 (taking NASA's word for it that Mechain & Messier actually meant NGC 5866 The Spindle Galaxy as M102). A faint but very apparent oblique smear of light in a triangular star field immediately lifted my mood - I've found it so much easier to discern the edge on targets, they seem to register with the brain being of distinctly different pattern to surrounding stars. Took an enjoyable look at M81 & M82 which can just fit in the same field in the Mak, M82 showing some texture and after looking at such dim, grey patches, looking bright with a slightly golden light. Two out of four of my winter Messier nemeses down, moving the total on to 97, felt like a great night's work and by now I was freezing and tired of peering at the limits of vision so after a couple of minutes of star-jumps to get the blood moving again I worked my way through some sparkly things... Double cluster (NCG 869/884) - stunning in both finder and Mak, really enjoyed the few contrasting yellow stars embedded and the dark lane between the two clusters and being able to step back and take this in naked eye as part of the ribbon of the Milky Way. Kembles cascade & NGC 1502, the Jolly Roger Cluster - I'd seen this designation for the cluster the other day when looking at Kembles cascade and was keen to put some higher magnification on the cluster itself, sure enough there is a pronounced diagonal cross of bright white stars, not so sure about the skull but I can see what they're driving at. Enjoyed the wide view of the cascade in the 8x50 finder then "zooming in" on the cluster by switching to the Mak. Owl/ET/Dragonfly NGC 457 - the Mak really excels on these smaller star clusters and at 63x in the 24mm this was filling about two thirds of the field. Very much ET at this magnfication, earlier in the week I was looking at it through the low mag ST80 and in that it was much more a gossamer Dragonfly. Gorgeous in either format. With clusters that look like things in mind, I remembered "Hagrid's Dragon" NGC 2301 over in Monoceros which I have never looked at. Slewing all the way over to Sirius first to make sure the mount and I were still on the same page, I had a lack-lustre attempt at seeing the Pup with a BCO 18mm Barlowed to 8mm (188x) -may have been something at 5 o'clock (RACI) view, I'll have to check, but as always nothing concrete and I was getting some shake from the building breeze at this mag, the one downside of my spot on the Downs is it really catches the slightest wind! On then to NGC 2301 which really does look like a dragon in flight - lovely stuff! Took a quick look at M41 as it was nice and high - super cluster this one looking very bright last night. Then allowed myself to get lost in the folds of M42 at high mag for a time, panning up and down. I have never seen it better and was able to really see the nebulosity and star shining from deep within the M43 De Marian region. Kicking myself now that I didn't actively look for the Running Man as the contrast was such that I might have had a shot at it - still, one to chase another day. After enjoying a quick look at receding Mars - just about discerning the polar region and the faintest hint of Albedo darkening toward the Eastern limb, I finished with a quick look for the Comet C/E3 ZTF low to the NE at around midnight - managed a couple of minutes on this and was just convincing myself that I'd got it, slightly non-stellar point with maybe the hint of a tail, when a car pulled into where I was parked 100m away putting paid to the best of my dark adaptation. Whatever they were doing up there either my presence put them off or it was a wrong turning as they pulled swiftly away. By this time I was getting properly cold, the sky had lost some of its quality with very thin, high haze plus I had noticed my attention span waning in the last half hour, so I called it quits and took the gear down with numb fingers. After one last look at the Winter Milky Way I got in the car, whacked the heating on and headed home for a cuppa and a thaw before a welcome bed.

Hi again guys! Here you have a new object report observed with my dob 18". If you prefer to read it in PDF format in a nice dark mode and with the support of some images that helps me to explain better myself you can check it in the web: https://theferretofcomets.com/index.php/en/messier-catalog/ Please take into account those images are pictures not sketches. As you can read in my web they have been gathered from public databases, mainly from telescopes in Palomar Mountain, HST and Calar Alto (Spain). What I have tried (quite successfully, I think) is to reflect how the object shifts with the change of eyepieces. The images can become a composite of several to show a better result. Also I have added a fixed rectangle to show the effect of the apparent field of the eyepiece. I play a little bit with the brightness and contrast to show how your eyepiece field is darker at lower eye pupil, but you lose details in the object. I mean, if you try to find exactly the same picture in the web you are going to fail. It takes a couple of hours (sometimes more) to generate all the pictures to get the better result, plus an extra hour to write down my voice-notes. Nagler 31mm (70x - 1º 10’ - 6.6mm). The first view of the cluster is quite nice. M103 is in a very rich field of stars, of varying magnitudes, but it clearly stands out from the rest. It is a small open cluster, occupying perhaps a tenth of the eyepiece, with a rather characteristic triangular shape. It is bright and easily resolvable. Despite the small size in this eyepiece several tens of stars are perfectly counted. I highlight a very bright bluish white star at the end of it as well as another fainter reddish star inside. From what I have read they call it the ‘Christmas tree’ cluster. It's a nice allegory although to me it reminds me more of the StarTrek brooch, the one used in the series by touching it to talk to the ship. Maybe I'm too geeky. Regardless of the object that reminds one is a curious cluster because its shape is clearly triangular, with this star standing out at the apex of the triangle. The image is especially beautiful because, despite its diminished size, the punctuality of the stars and their significant magnitude makes them stand out and, certainly, its nickname does it justice because they could be imagined as the spheres of a Christmas tree, shining in the night. Nagler 22mm (98x - 50’ - 4.7mm). It is worth a little more magnification to enjoy this curious object a little more. The stars still look tremendously sharp at this low magnification and it is a beautiful image. Unfortunately, though, it doesn't have much more to show other than that quiet, beautiful image of a series of stars forming a triangle, which, at a quick count, I estimate to be about 20 or 30. Delos 14mm (154x - 28’ - 3mm). I don't spend much more time on it although going up to 14mm has given me a pleasant surprise. As usual the object increases in size incredibly in this jump, occupying almost 50% of the eyepiece. The image is nice although simple, but the surprise has been the star that would form the ‘canopy' or ‘star’ at the top of the Christmas tree. The brightest of all, it has a much fainter companion. It is clearly a rather nice double star because of the contrast in brightness, however I am unable to differentiate the colors between the two. This is Struve 131 and I have to admit I am very bad at double stars, it must have a very obvious color for me to be able to identify their difference. It's something I need to work on more. It's a nice extra gift from the object because it's pretty dull to be honest. You don't need to work very hard to enjoy it, but hey that's also appreciated, of course after a few minutes of looking at it you're already thinking about the next object you want to jump to. And that's what I did. Ethos 10mm (216x - 27’ - 2.1mm). I didn't want to leave the object without going through the 10mm, it didn't bring me much but looking at 100º of apparent field is a different pleasure and thanks to the different colors and the punctuality of the stars it is a delight to stay a few minutes just contemplating something beautiful. To insist on pointing out something with this eyepiece I emphasize the curved base of the Christmas tree that reminds me of the StarTrek symbol and how beautiful is the contrast of colors of the stars with a deep jet black background. Clear and dark skies!

Hi again guys! Sadly this autumn visual astronomy has been very complicated in the south of Spain. We have suffered a lot of bad luck during our new moons with several cloudy nights. Fortunately, at the beginning of December I will be able to go out and capture new objects for my project. Also I have modified a little bit my web with the help of a very good friend of mine, and he has created dark mode cards so it is easy to read in your devices. Here you have a new object report observed with my dob 18" from this autumn of 2022. If you prefer to read it in PDF format in a nice dark mode and with the support of some images that helps me to explain better myself you can check it in the web: https://theferretofcomets.com/index.php/en/messier-catalog/ Please take into account those images are pictures not sketches. As you can read in my web they have been gathered from public databases, mainly from telescopes in Palomar Mountain, HST and Calar Alto (Spain). What I have tried (quite successfully, I think) is to reflect how the object shifts with the change of eyepieces. The images can become a composite of several to show a better result. Also I have added a fixed rectangle to show the effect of the apparent field of the eyepiece. I play a little bit with the brightness and contrast to show how your eyepiece field is darker at lower eye pupil, but you lose details in the object. I mean, if you try to find exactly the same picture in the web you are going to fail. It takes a couple of hours (sometimes more) to generate all the pictures to get the better result, plus an extra hour to write down my voice-notes. Nagler 31mm (70x - 1º 10’ - 6.6mm). Despite the low magnification and the small size of the galaxy with this eyepiece you can already see that it is a very beautiful object with a lot of detail. It makes a nice play with a bright reddish star that seems to me to be to the north of the galaxy. The size of the galaxy in the eyepiece is quite small, I don't think it occupies more than a tenth of the eyepiece. It has a very bright, almost point-like nucleus and then a much fainter halo, all very round in shape, both the nucleus and the outer halo. With a little lateral vision one can see a difference in brightness between the outer regions of the halo and the inner ones. Clearly the halo is like a kind of ‘ring’ that surrounds a much fainter region until reaching the nucleus, which is extremely bright compared to the rest of the galaxy. That is, describing the galaxy from the outside to the inside, it would be, a slightly brighter ring surrounding the entire galaxy of a small thickness, perhaps 1/10 the size of the galaxy, then a much fainter region that also surrounds the galaxy to finish seeing a very bright central area, and very punctual. Nagler 22mm (98x - 50’ - 4.7mm). What a wonderful galaxy! Now I pay more attention to the nucleus of the galaxy, and when I use the averted vision I get more detail. A halo appears around the point nucleus that is brighter than the outer halo, turning the nucleus from a point into a small circle. It is not very big but compared to the point nucleus I saw before it has a good size. So the galaxy would be more like this outer halo with a slightly brighter ring on the outside and then a bright area in the center that is concentrated in an even brighter point nucleus. On the other hand the galaxy no longer seems to me totally round but somewhat oval on one of its axes. I keep adding magnifications to discover more details, especially in its central region which seems very interesting. Delos 14mm (154x - 28’ - 3mm). Thanks to the higher magnifications the galaxy gains in complexity. The image of the galaxy grows and with it I confirm that it is not totally round but rather oval as if it lay on the background of stars between 12º and 22º (between half of 45º and half of half of 45º, that is more or less the scale I follow, 0º galaxy in front of us, 90º galaxy totally edge-on, and between those two extremes I wonder if it is half, or half of the half, to be able to describe it better). Now I seem to see even some kind of structure between the outermost part of the galaxy and the inner part, I think I see a kind of union between the outer zone (the ring) and the bright part of the nucleus. Like two very faint arcs starting from the outer zone and joining the bright nucleus. Ethos 10mm (216x - 27’ - 2.1mm). With this eyepiece the part that strikes me the most is the bright area of the core, previously it always seemed uniform but now I see a kind of dark arc, very close to the bright core that divides its bright area in two. It is as if it were a very narrow band of dust dividing the bright zone inside the nucleus. That is, the galaxy looks to me at these magnifications with the following structure from the inside out. A VERY bright, point-like, almost stellar nucleus, now a very narrow dark arc surrounding it, then continuing the bright zone in the center, which is followed by a fainter zone ending with a zone of brightness again (the aforementioned ring) in its outermost part, never as bright as the central zone but brighter than the part between the ring and the bright zone of the nucleus. Ethos 8mm (270x - 22’ - 1.7mm). With these magnifications everything described above is more magnified but I also lose the fainter parts. What strikes me most now is that band of dark dust, as it seems to me that it surrounds the nucleus, because I do not know if more than surrounding it is as if it were a parenthesis that encloses it. And also the core itself, that bright area gives a beautiful impression of pearl embedded in a sea of light. It is spectacular, as if it was sinking surrounded by an intense brightness that in a couple of places is cut by this dark area of the dust band, or what I guess will be a dust band. A very suggestive and beautiful image. Delos 4.5mm (480x - 9’ - 1mm). At this magnification I have not obtained new details, I am quite tired after almost 6 hours of observation and the truth is that it is almost difficult for me to focus correctly. Clear and dark skies

A little late in posting this one due to work and the arrival of a new/old ‘scope but wanted to record my first solo trip to a darker site and a memorable observing session. As dark fell last Thursday (May 6th) there was a deep clarity to the sky that convinced me to do something I'd been threatening to do since the end of lockdown, put the gear in the car and drive 15 minutes out of town to a local country park. Farley Mount is a favourite viewpoint around Winchester and I'd previously clocked its near 360 degree horizon and elevated position away from immediate lights. The dis-incentive to date had been a ten minute walk from the car park through deep and ancient Yew woodland to the observing site, but the sky conditions, largely moonless night, & a lighter day in the diary at work Friday convinced me to bite the bullet. I don't mind admitting I was bit nervous for no rational reason, I'm a big lad and despite any local superstition all I'm really likely to run into up there is the occasional poacher (I took the chance the cold would keep al fresco couples and any attendant, ahem, spectators indoors). Nevertheless I was glad of the relaxed Canadian astro-dude banter of the Objects to Observe in May edition of the Actual Astronomy podcast in the car on the way up there and as an extra precaution took my heavy and very bright night-watchman style Maglite torch/truncheon for reassurance. I was pleased to find the car park deserted, no steamy cars or worse still, blood-stained pickups with deer in the back in evidence. The sky was mesmerising however, good seeing and good to excellent transparency. By the time I'd walked in, selected a spot allowing use of a handy bench as observing table and gone through the familiar routine of set-up I’d got very happy with my isolated situation and ready to track down some more spring Messier objects. This site is about 10 miles from Southampton and with a clear line of sight down to the dockyards and the ships strung out along the Solent and on toward Portsmouth. Beautiful in its own right but casting a glow to South and South East up to about 50 degrees. Basingstoke glows dimly over the Northern horizon about 20 miles away but only seemed to be affecting a dome up to about 15 degrees. All other directions were dark to the horizon and no local lights at all. This is a big step up from the local park! The Milky Way was very plainly visible along with M13 and 10+ stars in Ursa Minor. I used a Mak 127 on an AZ GTi, Baader Hyperion 24mm giving 63x magnification, a Neodymium filter and occasionally switched in a Baader Zoom 8-24mm to up the power. Aligned Vega & Arcturus then slewed to Vindemiatrix as a start point for some of the galaxies I haven't yet spotted in Virgo & Comma B. Took a quick look at M86 & M84 region first to gauge conditions against my last session in that area of sky and it was immediately clear the darker site and clear sky made a huge difference. The galaxies sprung out in 9x50 finder and I could see more of the nebulous regions surrounding the core. Took a quick sweep NE along Markarian's chain from there and it was dotted with 7 or 8 fuzzy patches in the same field, amazing. By this time I was getting dark adapted and relaxing into the new environment, so turned to new targets.I orientated myself through the finder in a triangle between Vindemiatrix, Porrima and Omicron Virginis and started hunting for a fuzzy patch between a diagonal pair just off centre right (in RACI view) of that region… M49 – Spent quite a while hunting this one before realising I’d aligned on the wrong fuzzy patch between a diagonal pair & had to resort to Stellarium on the iPad to find an optical triple in the bottom right of field which confirmed I was in fact looking at NGC4526/NGC4560 – “The Lost Galaxy” apparently now found. A quick sweep up and West found a wider spaced pair and there was a faint fuzzy cloud with a slightly brighter centre, surprisingly dim though. Not a lot of features so moved on but M49 located. M85 - found to R of 11 Coma Berenices, verified by the presence of dim star on lower R edge. Not much detail but nice to find. M100 – moved to 6 Coma Berenices as a reference then up and W to place a pair bottom L and look for M100 top right, eventually perceived as much as saw this – to my eye was only visible in averted vision – some sense of circular shape, apparent but really dim, brought home the vast distance (55 Million light years). M99 – back to 6 C.B. and put it in the top L of the field and a little down to the right, along the base of a low triangle of dim stars was M99 – a highlight of the night, whilst very faint showing some spiral structure- took a long look at this one. M98 – back the other side of 6 C.B an oblique egde on clearly visible as a “stripe” – reminded me of a dim M82. M61 – Looking half way along the line between Porrima and Omicron Virginis this one took me ages to find. I kept going to the spot where I thought should be and panning around not finding much. Tried a GoTo and that landed me in the dark. Eventually used Stellarium live on the iPad to confirm I had 16 Virginis and a line of 3 stars above in the field then moved up & found M61 between its 2 bridging stars. Another one very faint, and with averted vision some cloudy spiral form was visible. That all took a while and I was a bit cold so I decided to just hit GoTo on some targets of opportunity and see what I could find. Transparency up at the Zenith and over into Lyra and Cygnus was by this time superb. I had a bit of globular-fest alighting on: M13 which looked superb with many stars resolved and not for the first time a hint of dark lanes. M92 – smaller area than M13 and dimmer with less resolution but still lovely and a new “M” for me. M3 – Jumping around a bit but this is the first globular I found in binoculars and I wanted to compare. M5 – Tighter than M13 but I think slightly more spectacular, may be my favourite so far. M10 & M12 in Ophiuchus – easily popping into view in the finder. Have to confess I’d stopped really making notes by this stage. After all that galaxy hunting at the limits of both scope (and more to the point observer), the GoTo was behaving and the globulars look like celestial fireworks and are so easy to spot – great fun! Couldn’t resist a look over at M57 and things were so crisp and transparent over there I tried for M27 also and there it was, bigger than M57 and with a discernible double sphere shape. I rounded off with a super view of M81/82 with a sense of shape in M81 and of dark band across M82. Also notable was that where the other galaxies I’d viewed that night were grey mists of varying density – these appeared both brighter and golden in colour. Really amazing view. Just one more… (it was gone 2.30 am by this time and getting a bit blowy which wasn’t helping tripod stability or my core temperature!) M51 – great view with twin cores, a discernible spiral and a lane of connecting stars between the two centres. Amazing way to finish. An unashamed Messier-ticking session then but some unforgettable views and firsts, I am already plotting my next darker sky run, now, how far do I have to go to lose the glow from all those dockyards…?

Having waited in vain for the clouds to clear on Tuesday night, it was great to get out and finally see some stars last night! I'd picked out a new spot to try on the South Downs just outside Winchester, on a well made farm track that runs due South just across the A272 from Cheesefoot Head viewpoint car-park. In the daytime this is an airy downland spot filled with wild flowers and Skylark song, by night it offers a super horizon from SE. round to NW. with the pretty but invasive lights of Southampton port and Fawley refinery 15 miles or so S - SW. Lightpollutionmap.info says it has an SQM of spot on 21, a worthwhile improvement for a ten minute drive over my rugby pitch site at 20.27 and only a fraction lighter than Farley Mount - and minus the third of a mile carry through slightly eerie Yew woodland! I got up there about 11.45 - just in time for an ISS pass which I caught to the NW along with my first definite noctilucent cloud sighting to the N. Seeing was quite steady and transparency good outside of bands of thin high cloud that cleared as the night wore on. There was some haze that mingled with LP over the coast causing extinction below 10 degrees or so. I'd planned a recce session in the Sagittarius area using an ST80 and a couple of new filters - Baader O-III and ES UHC to try on the nebulae. After aligning on Arcturus and Altair I toured the region finding the UHC really helpful in cutting through the low-down murk. Many first views with the Lagoon Nebula M8, Eagle & Swan Nebulae M16/17 and Trifid Nebula M20 the standout highlights, the first of many visits I'm certain. All observations were made with a Baader Hyperion 24mm (21x) and Baader Classic Ortho 18mm (28x) and interchanging filters and natural view to tease out the detail. Later I switched to 2 inch mode and used a 31mm Hyperion Aspheric (16x) for some panoramic views. All stunning stuff! M16 elongated cluster, Hercules like shape, double upper L of “keystone”. UHC brought out dark lanes crossing. M17 prominent orange star above, glowing nebulous area below right of faint trapezium asterism. Dark tendrils with AV. M8 - epic. Bright clusters multiple dark areas and glowing patches. O-III enhanced the cloud to 20% width of fov in 18mm M21- arrowhead cluster M20 - stunning star spangled glowing nebula with dark lanes. Fuzzy cloud wider with O-III. M22 - bright compact glob. Triangle with centre star asterism to L. Diagonal pair to upper R. [RACI view] M4, 6, 7, 19 too low in murk over Southampton to pick out. Widefield (31mm Hyperion, 2-inch) on M8, 20, 21 stunning field. M24 bright blue beehive like M16/17 In same field. Wow. M18 - rich field, pronounced "V" to R. It was after 2 by this time, so I took a quick tour around M57, a squint at part of the Veil Nebula with the O-III filter (warrants much more time!) and grabbed a great view of M31 which was easily visible naked eye at this point. With the 18mm I was for the first time able to pick out M32 & M110 - bonus! I resisted the temptation to switch to Jupiter & Saturn, by now quite high to the South, packed away and enjoyed a last sweep of the Milky Way naked eye and with 10x50s - vertical and almost visible to the horizon (barring those port lights!). Rolled back down the hill after a lovely shirtsleeves session in a super new spot. Mainly today I am drinking coffee...

Messier 57 is is just coming into a position for a decent look around 11 30 pm. IT is a colourful object and I thought it would give me a good target with which to practice my colour developing in PS/Lightroom. I have read so much about how to produce a LRGB image from the four stacked/calibrated luminance, red, blue and green images, a lot seems contradicatory and some, when followed, gave me colour yes, but not as we know it. I am sure a fair chunk must be put down to me. Anyway, I now have a work flow which gives me colour, sometimes resembling what other people have obtained. Progess of sorts. This images is based on 114s subs at gain 139, offset 21. L 39, R 20, G 20, B 19 Calibrated and stacked in DSS (flats, dark flats and darks) Messier 57 Ring Nebula in Lyra NASA: M57, or the Ring Nebula, is a planetary nebula, the glowing remains of a sun-like star. The tiny white dot in the centre of the nebula is the star’s hot core, called a white dwarf. M57 is about 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, and is best observed during August. Discovered by the French astronomer Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix in 1779, the Ring Nebula has an apparent magnitude of 8.8 and can be spotted with moderately sized telescopes. Equipment: Celestron 9.25 XLT at F10, Skywatcher EQ6 Pro GEM, ZWO 1600MM Pro, ZWO EFW with ZWO LRGB filters, QHY5IIC guide camera on Skywatcher 9 x 50 finderscope, Celestron Focus Motor Software: Ascom 6, Eqmod, Cartes du Ciel, AstroPhotography Tool, PHD2

Had three sessions last night, the first the CPRE Orion star count with my 11 year old daughter, magic. The second was from the light-blighted garden mid evening - successfully picked up M41, M35 and M67 all for the first time - then a neighbour put on more lights so had a go at Polaris, nearly, almost sort of resolved as a double this time. After a tea and warm break I managed to convince myself that the Mak 127 carry over to the park at 11:30 pm constituted allowable lockdown exercise (body AND mind officer...) so headed out to a wider and, it turned out, reasonably darker viewing spot in the park. I haven't yet much comparative experience of conditions but I would say seeing was quite steady while transparency a bit milky. Winchester sits in a river valley and I suspect this may be a local feature until I can get up & out of town. Anyhoo, what started as proof-of-concept of some grab & go bag & padding ideas, turned into a really super session of clusters and doubles, most of which I had never seen before, & fruitless searches for fainter things. Technique-wise I brightest star aligned on Sirius and Arcturus & did have a few accuracy niggles with the GoTo , however a combination of the Telrad + 10x50 Bino sweeps got most of the bright targets quickly in the Finderscope and centred. Highlight has to be the Beehive, M44 which I found breathtaking & can't believe I have never looked for before, Beta Mono triple-star which was amazingly 3D and set me off on a Tatooine sunset imagination-trip and M67, dim & red the kind of place where Klingons might hang out! After much reading on here over all these starless nights I had made a list and although I deviated a bit from it and failed to find ANY galaxies or planetary nebula, the list was a great idea and reminded me that I wanted to go and hunt down the targets in Cancer which I would otherwise have forgotten and missed two of the highlights of the evening. Eventually my phone battery gave out and as I was wi-fi tethered to the AZ GTi this ended my session shortly before frost-bite ensued. That dew shield was a good buy For what its worth, here are my notes, all observations made on SW Mak 127 on AZ GTi, Baader Hyeprion 24mm 68 degree fixed for most & occasional higher mag on Baader Hyperion 8-24mm Zoom. Telrad & SW 9x50 finder, supplemented by Celestron Nature DX ED 10x50 Bins.

Here is my sketch of m81 and m82 sketched in good seeing and in my light polluted backyard (Spiral arms fainter than the sketching , could just make them out as a halo outside of the core

Hello fellow gazers I want to share a little project of mine I started a few days ago. Last week I opened another thread regarding a new EP which I ordered and @YKSE commented on it (again thank you for that! ). I saw his awesome signature and blandly copied it into my signature thinking to myself that I as of now had a Mission... a Mission to see and log all those beautiful clusters, nebulas and galaxies! As a well known sitcom actor would say... "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!" Then I ran into a few problems... first of all... where the hell would I find all the information I would need and secondly, the more pressing problem, how would I keep track of this huge amount of everything?! I really don't know how YKSE is doing it, or even others, but I thought to myself that a good ol' classic excel table would do the trick. I promptly started to gather the four catalogues in question, copied them into an excel tabel an HEY! there are MANY dublicates... Filtering them out isn't that easy since the information I found isn't completely to the point I would need it to be. So after a few days of manual crunching NGC numbers, here the actual result. The list includes a general number of the whole list, NGC / other number, the four catalogues, common name, type, distance, constellation, apparent magnitude and a "best to observe"-tab. To make things a little easier I included the NGC / other number to almost completely eliminate the duplicates. I also included a "best to observe"-tab to simply filter the catalogues by months. This way I can grab the list, filter it and promptly see what I could potentially see and what not. And the most important thing of all? A small cell where I can put an "x" if I've seen whatever I wanted to see. This goes allong with a date and location tab to round everything up. In some separate sheets I created a General Overview, the four separate catalogues and a Constellation sheet where I'll put some valuable information. The General Overview will be a sheet holding the logs information. For example I can immediately check how many objects I've seen of the Messier Objects or the Collinder Catalog and so on. I'll display a simple number like 56 / 110 Messier Objects and include a percentage diagram. To make things a little funnier I'll also add a general counter for the four catalogues, hence the previously mentioned general number of the whole list. After the list is complete I could se myself linking every entry to an online catalogue with more information and pictures for further research. If someone wants this list I'll gladly share it Have a great evening everyone, Abe

Hello folks, for long I have been browsing the internet to find a suitable 10in dob and despite lack of reviews, I have decided to take the plunge with the Bresser Messier 10in Dobsonian. There was some doubt at first, especially when considering the popularity of similar scopes from Skywatcher, Meade and GSO. Even though Bresser is relatively new to the market, it has some clever features: 1. The massive 2.5in hexagonal rack and pinion focuser is very solid and the movement is smooth. Despite being only single speed, Bresser sells an a dual speed 10:1 extension. However, I find the movement precise enough and do not need the extension at the moment. 2. Optical finder scope feels a bit cheap but it is a nice upgrade over the red dot finder I had on my previous scope. 3. Rocker box style base allows disassembling the scope into two pieces (OTA and base). 4. Tube rings allows the scope to be easily balanced when adding weight + after adding a suitable dovetail plate, the OTA can be used on an equatorial mount (if you plan to upgrade to an eq mount, I would consider the 8in model, as an eq mount for the 10in would be expensive). The only negative comments I can give about the scope is the production process. There were some minor issues with the assembly with the scope as parts did not fit properly. First problem was with one hole drilled deeper (loosening the particular screw fixed the issue). Another problem was with the altitude wheel as it made the OTA to pop out from the rocker box. (A loose screw on one of the plastic pads between the box and altitude wheels was causing this. Make sure all these screws are tightened and below the surface of the pads). Lastly, I assume there must have been a mistake in the quantity of items included (I got twice as many screws for the rockerbox and 2 eyepieces instead of one, both were 25mm super plossl but the standard was a 1.25in advertised on the bresser webpage, while the other was a 2in wide angle) I did not have the opportunity to test the scope outside properly due to clouds. Update: 01.06.2017 Had the chance to try it out on the moon and jupiter to a max magnification of around 160x. The results were very sharp and detailed views. Unfortunately, clouds rolled in before it got dark enough to observe DSO's. I am waiting for clouds to clear and a package with a 42mm wide angle eyepiece and a 2in GSO 2x ED barlow to arrive next week.

The Eagle Nebula Messier 16 ansd Open Cluster NGC 6611 in the constellation Serpens. ( click on image to see larger ) M16 is around 7,000 light years distant from Earth in the Sagittarius-Carina spiral arm of our Milkyway galaxy and may be part of a larger structure that extends to and includes the Omega Nebula ( M17 ) in Sagittarius. Details: Eagle Nebula - Messier 16 ( IC 4703 ), Open Clusters - NGC 6611 and Trumpler 32. RA ~ 18h 19'm45s Dec ~ -13deg 46' 20" Skywatcher Quattro 10" f4 Newtonian telescope. Skywatcher AZ Eq6 GT Mount.Orion 80mm f5 guide scope and auto guider - PHD2. Baader MPCC Mark 3 Coma Corrector, UHC-S 'nebula' filter. Nikon D5300 (unmodified). Field of view (deg) ~ 1.35 x 0.90. ISO800, 14bit NEF, Long Exp. NR on. 35 x 180sec (1/3 before & 2/3 after zenith) 17 July 2015. PixInsight re-processed 21 Aug 2016.. Links: https://500px.com/MikeODay http://photo.net/photos/MikeODay

Just in from 30 mins out the back picking clear spots twixt the clouds. Just had to get some starlight!!! Canon 15x50 IS binoculars. MW easily visible from Perseus through to Scutum. Much mottling with dark dust clouds. M26 and M11 and lovely Scutum star cloud and dark nebulae. Barnards 'E' in Aquila. M71, Brocchi's Cluster. A quick branch off to M!3 and M92 in Hercules. M27 aside the Cygnus Rift. NA nebula prominent and the Eastern Veil a faint arc. M39 a triangle and the long dark 'rift' leading towards the Cocoon. Caroline's Cluster, M52, Pacman, NGC 147, M103, NGC63 in Cass, 'cluster central'. M31, 32 and 110. M33, a smudge. M15 a gem in Pegasus. Double cluster and Kembles Cascade a favourite. The stars and objects seemed especially alive tonight Wallowed in the splendour. Hope y'all get your fill of the universe soon! Cheers Paul

Astrophotography Scrapbook Vol. 1 Cover Page Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius ( Messier 8, NGC 6523 ) The Fighting Dragons of Ara ( NGC 6188 ) War and Peace in Scorpius ( NGC 6357 ) Spiral Galaxy NGC 6744 in Pavo Ptolemy's Cluster in Scorpius ( Messier 7, NGC 6475 ) A Million Stars in the Deep South ( NGC 104, 47 Tucanae ) A Wishing Well in Carina ( NGC 3532 ) A Beehive in the Southern Sky ( NGC 2516 ) The Sliver Coin in Sculptor ( NGC 253 ) The Great Nebula in Orion ( Messier 42, NGC 1976 ) A Cluster of Pearls in Centaurus ( NGC 3766 ) - new 5 Dec resources: Scrapbook Template ------------------------------------- When I show my astrophotography images to my friends and family they invariably want to know what they are looking at. This led me to wonder if there was a way I could display my images on a single page together with a few notes on the target object as well as few technical details of the capture for those who might be interested. What I came up with a "scrapbook" like page that combines all of these three elements in a single PDF sheet ( or jpeg image) that ultimately I might combine together to form a PDF book that I can share online or send to friends and family. In the meantime, I thought I might post in this thread each page of my work-in-progress towards volume 1 of my Astrophotography Scrapbook. Any and all comments, observations, suggestions and constructive criticisms will be warmly received. Cheers Mike ps. The pages have been sized to fit full screen on an IPAD

Globular clusters, whenever I point my scope towards 95% of them they come out as a hazy patch. The only two globulars I can see kind of clearly are the Hercules cluster and Messier 3 in Canes Venetici. All the rest look fuzzy, What aperture would you need to see them clearly? I have a 4.5" reflector. Thanks Adam

Ptolemy's Cluster in the constellation Scorpius ( Messier 7, NGC 6475 ) Scrapbook page ...

The Great Nebula in Orion ( Messier 42, NGC 1976 ) ( tap on image to see larger ) Scrapbook page ... Details: The Great Orion Nebula (Messier 42, Messier 43, NGC 1976 ) in the Orion Constellation RA 5 36 15, DEC -5 26 31 ( 2016.9 ) Skywatcher Quattro 10" f4 Newtonian telescope Skywatcher AZ Eq6 GT Mount Orion Short Tube 80mm guide scope & auto guider - PHD2 Baader MPCC Mark 3 Coma Corrector & no filter Nikon D5300 (unmodified) Field of view (deg) < ~ 1.35 x 0.90 long exp noise reduction on 45 x 120 sec ISO 400, 15 x 60 sec ISO 100, +various short exposures 3 to 15 sec to extend dynamic range for bright stars Pixinsight & Photoshop 28th November 2016

Omega Nebula in Sagittarius ( Messier 17 , NGC 6618 ) ( click on image to see larger ) Omega Nebula in Sagittarius ( Messier 17, NGC 6618 ). Visible to the naked eye the Omega Nebula (also known as the Swan, Horseshoe or Lobster Nebula) M17 is in the Milkyway and is aound 4200 light years distance from Earth. Links: 500px.com/MikeODay photo.net/photos/MikeODay Details: RA 18h 22m, Dec -16deg 10'. Skywatcher Quattro 10" f4 Newtonian. Skywatcher AZ Eq6 GT Mount Orion Short Tube 80mm guide scope & auto guider - PHD2. Baader MPCC Mark 3 Coma Corrector, UHC-S 'Nebula' filter. Nikon D5300 (unmodified). Field of view (deg) ~ 1.35 x 0.90. 37 x 100 sec ISO800. Pixinsight & Photoshop 14 August 2015 re-processed 8 Aug 2016 with current workflow.

The Lagoon Nebula ( Messier 8, NGC 6523 ) in the constellation Sagittarious. ( click on image to see larger) The Laboon Nebula ( M8 ) is visible to the naked eye under dark skies from most latitudes except the far north. Seemingly covering an area about three times that of the full Moon, M8 actually covers an area somewhat greater than 110 light years and is around 4300 light years from Earth in the Sagittarius-Carina spiral arm of the Milkyway galaxy. ...... The frames for this image where taken back when I was very new to astrophotography and I was experimenting with camera settings. On this occasion I wanted to see if JPEG images might be easier to process - I was disappointed with the results. Now that I have a bit more knowledge and skill at processing I decided to have another attempt at trying to process the set because I liked the way the JPEG files had retained colour in the stars. I am reasonably pleased with the result; the faint detail in the nebula is not there but I quite like the colours in the centre and in the stars. Details: Messier 8, NGC 6523 - Lagoon Nebula Skywatcher Quattro 10" f4 Newtonian telescope. Skywatcher AZ Eq6 GT Mount.Orion auto guider - PHD2. Baader MPCC Mark 3 Coma Corrector. Nikon D300 (unmodified). 80 x 30 sec ISO 1600 (JPEG) - 31 Aug 14. PixInsight and Photoshop. processed 13 August 2016 Links: https://500px.com/MikeODay http://photo.net/photos/MikeODay

Theres one from the 2nd M64, taken through the mak Newtonian, and an atik 314L plus mono. the stack was 14 x 4 mins.........cloud rolled in and spoiled the show after that.

The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy ( Messier 83, NGC 5236 ) in the constellation Hydra. ( click on image to see fuill size ) Messier 83 is a relatively large and bright spiral galaxy visible from southern and mid latitudes. Clearly visible is the central bar with its bright central bulge as well as multiple dark dust lanes and areas of nebulosity in the sweeping arms. At a distance of 15 Million light years, the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, whilst close in astronomical terms, is too far away and hence way too small for my backyard telescope to resolve individual stars; so all of the stars that can be seen are in fact in the near foreground of the image and reside, like us, in the Milkyway Galaxy. Much harder to see are the many far more distant galaxies that look like tiny fuzzy stars in the image. The easiest of which are PGC 724536 and PGC 48132 that appear close together in the centre of the image just to the right of Messier 83. Both are edge on and look like tiny flying saucers. Details: Skywatcher Quattro 10" f4 Newtonian. Skywatcher AZ Eq6 GT Mount Orion 80mm f5 guide scope and auto guider - PHD2 software. Nikon D5300 (unmodified) Hutech IDAS D1 filter, 14bit NEF, Long Exp. NR on. 25 June 2016. 17 x 4min ISO400 Pixinsight and photoshop. Links: https://500px.com/mikeoday http://photo.net/photos/MikeODay

The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy ( Messier 83, NGC 5236 ) in the constellation Hydra. Additional sub-images added ( 9 x 3 min @ ISO 200, no filter ) and colour balance tweaked to remove slight yellow/green tinge. The lower ISO and removal of the LP pollution filter has made it easier to bring out the subtle colours in the stars. ( click on image to see fuill size ) Messier 83 is a relatively large and bright spiral galaxy visible from southern and mid latitudes. Clearly visible is the central bar with its bright central bulge as well as multiple dark dust lanes and areas of nebulosity in the sweeping arms. At a distance of 15 Million light years, the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, whilst close in astronomical terms, is too far away and hence way too small for my backyard telescope to resolve individual stars; so all of the stars that can be seen are in fact in the near foreground of the image and reside, like us, in the Milkyway Galaxy. Much harder to see are the many far more distant galaxies that look like tiny fuzzy stars in the image. The easiest of which are PGC 724536 and PGC 48132 that appear close together in the centre of the image just to the right of Messier 83. Both are edge on and look like tiny flying saucers. Details: Skywatcher Quattro 10" f4 Newtonian. Skywatcher AZ Eq6 GT Mount Orion 80mm f5 guide scope and auto guider - PHD2 software. Nikon D5300 (unmodified) 14bit NEF, Long Exp. NR on. 25 June 2016 - Hutech IDAS D1 filter, 17 x 4 min @ ISO 400 28 June 2016 - no filter, 9 x 3 min @ ISO 200 Pixinsight and photoshop. Links: https://500px.com/mikeoday http://photo.net/photos/MikeODay Edited June 27 by mike005

The Lagoon Nebula ( Messier 8, NGC 6523 ) in the constellation Sagittarius - by Mike O'Day ( https://500px.com/mikeoday ) ( click on image to see full size ) The Laboon Nebula ( M8 ) is visible to the naked eye under dark skies from most latitudes except the far north. Seemingly covering an area about three times that of the full Moon, M8 actually covers an area somewhat greater than 110 light years and is around 4300 light years from Earth in the Sagittarius-Carina spiral arm of the Milkyway galaxy. Links: https://500px.com/MikeODay http://photo.net/photos/MikeODay Details: Messier 8, NGC 6523 - Lagoon Nebula. Skywatcher Quattro 10" f4 Newtonian telescope. Skywatcher AZ Eq6 GT Mount. Orion auto guider - PHD2. Baader MPCC Mark 3 Coma Corrector, UHC-S 'nebula' filter. Nikon D300 (unmodified) (14bit NEF). Field of view (deg) ~ 1.35 x 0.90. 20 x 120 sec ISO400. 26 x 30 sec ISO 1600. 23 x 240 sec ISO 200. PixInsight and Photoshop. 2 August 14 . re-processed 24 April 2016 to include the additional subs ( the first version only made use of the 23 x 240 sec ISO 200 subs ) and putting use the processing lessons I have learnt over the past year. Here is the previous version:

Hi all after a crazy Easter weekend of visiting here there,and every where here's my M104 with the contes and some charcoal for the dust lane ,this was the 18th I thought with it being low but over the forest and no orange glow I put the UHC filter on the ep ,it was rather bright for a change the core seemed bright tonight it's a lot dimmer usually but the UHC seemed to pull it out I also did a bit of the Virgo bowl there's a lot of smudges at around x75 Here's the drawing of m104 I also did a bit of the chain starting at M84 Pat M104 M84

I'm guessing almost every deep sky observer has had a go at Messier's list at some point, and I'm also sure that all of you have had the odd object that has been frustratingly difficult to observe. Sure as we all start with the wonders of M13, 42, 31, 45, etc, it seems the sky is full of rich pickings... then inevitably, within a few months we find ourselves staring furiously at the area of sky that we 'know' M97 is but even our imagination can't help us now! Persistence pays off eventually, and slowly but surely even the faintest of fuzzies are claimed for our observing journals. That is, until we meet our Messier nemesis (singular or plural!)... regardless of how often we try these stubborn face-on spirals and fiendishly low clusters remain invisible. Do we need more aperture? (possibly ), do we need darker skies? (probably), but either way, persistence must remain our greatest weapon. SO the question is... which Messiers are you missing? or more accurately, which Messiers cause you consistent trouble? I've still got a handful of southern OCs left (good excuse for a holiday to warmer climates me thinks!), but my 'arch-enemy' remains M101. Anyone similar?