Mixed Bag but soooo much fun

[hayju01]

So I was determined to get a night seeing in, having been stuck with a flipping cold the last 4 days, wouldn't have been able to carry the weights out for the EQ6 let alone the rest of it

So I got set up around 5pm as I wanted to get a few things checked out and my prime viewing spot is best placed for viewing the moon and I wanted to see what the 9.25 would do to that. Cumulous Nibmus flying overhead but in between great images took it up to 10mm with Bx2. Was also going to try pc guidance from on my netbook and remoted in from my desk PC but it soon became appraent that the PC gremlins werent going to let me playball (turned out later to be good old Adobe updating) so I gave up on that idea and figured I'd do some lunar imaging which I did but at the scope hadn't been fully aligned (no stars about at 5pm ) it wasn't the best ever lunar session but I'm sure there's something in the batch I can use.

Anyways, once the evening chores were done and there were some stars about it was time to get aligning, all done and on to Saturn still a few clouds about so decided not to image quite yet. Got some great seeing and 4 moons. Decided it was time to do some imaging got all set up and then it RAINED but not a single cloud above me, as you can imagine a scramble ensued, luckily it wasn't a downpour and i manged to get the scope covered with only 4 or 5 spots on it, netbook didnt fair so well so i figured that was it for doing any imaging just in case it decided to really rain.

So an seeing night it was goign to be and a great seeing night it was too, moon first before it disappeared behind neighbours roof

Then on to M3, managed to get that resolved rather well Then onto M81/M82 but scope was too out of whack and they were too high up, so that was it quick dart back to Saturn and time to realign.... sorted

M57 - Ring Nebula, M5, NGC 7662 - Blue Snowball, M101, M104 - Sombrero, M51 and a few others in between.

Back to Saturn to for one last look as by this time the EQ6 was flashing away quite nicely as it had alomst drained my power tank.

So all in all am excellent nights observing and I will make sure I always have a obs plan for these occasions and maybe buy another powertank so they dont get cut short

Thanks for reading

Justin

[Moon monkey]

Nice one I saw the ring nebula last night ... loved it first DSO for me

Regards Chas.

[Astro Imp]

Hi JUstin,

Nice report, enjoyed reading it.

Glad your feeling better, shame being under the weather when we had a run of reasonable nights.

Good luck.