First night out in 2 months

[WayBig]

Clear sky, saturday night and not being too knackered all coincided and I got my first observing session for about 2 months in.

After struggling to align my finder scope (!) I decided to stick with easy to find objects, some new, some old favourites.

To start with, m29 in Cygnus, a small but easy to find open cluster. From there down to albireo and using that as a pointer, up to m56, which although a globular cluster was faint and gave the impression of a faint well populated open cluster. From there a quick hop up to take in m57 which is always worth a look.

Then down to m71 in sagitta, easy to locate in between two just naked eye stars, then up to the apple core, sorry dumbbell nebula with nice structure showing. This was bigger than I remember, perhaps the conditions were better than the last time I spotted this one and I was seeing more of the structure.

From there I decided to see how low down I could go in the south, as there are many many objects in sagittarius that I haven't seen. I just got m11, the wild duck cluster in the field of view with my roof just below it! What a beautiful cluster, i've not seen this before, it's got to be one of the best. Te other objects in this area were all behind the house, so I'll need another observing site to take those in.

From there'd I thought I'd try to see some imagers targets but was unable to spot either the veil or north American nebulas.

That was it, I know I'd be woken by the kids at 6 so turned in about 1am. I'd intended to look for the comet but completely forgot. Hopefully next weekend will be clear to allow for that.

Felt great to be back outside again!

[DaveS]

Similar night here, except I wimped out at 12.30.

Although it was a "clear" night the sky was so luminous nothing much was visible below mag 3.5, perhaps 4

I managed M29 and 57 (Surprisingly). M13 showed hints of stars at x135 but was mainly a faint fuzz.

I tried several times to find M56 but no luck at all, through low power the background was very luminous.

M71 and M27 were on my hit list, but I couldn't even see any stars of Sagitta, so didn't even try.

About 12.30 the person in the house opposite turned their (Un-curtained) bathroom lights on, wrecking my night vision, so called it a night.

For reference, on a reasonable night I would expect to see Sagitta, and Delphinus, as well as all the main stars of Lyra. Last night, no Sagitta, no Delphinus. Of Lyra, alpha, beta and gamma were visible, but nothing else. Looking at Aquilla, alpha and gamma were visible, but not beta.

Will stop rambling now,

Dave

Dave

[WayBig]

That's bad luck, I must have got a bit less LP than you. I noticed some, but not all of the streetlights around the garden went out some time after midnight so that helped

I've just remembered, I've flocked the top part of my tube since I last went out, that will by why the ring and dumbbell nebula were the brightest I've seen. It does appear to work!

[DaveS]

I was following the "urban astronomer" list in July's Astronomy Now, and the Milky Way wonders bit. Will have another go when it's clear again.

Although there're no streetlights visible from my garden there's a heck of a lot of uplighters around, in fact one bar not too far from home has blue uplighters on all night, and the local Morrisons has un-shielded mercury vapour lamps in their car-park, again on all night (Why? It's not a 24 hr store ). that and people who don't bother to turn off lights when not in use, sorry I'll stop now before I start ranting .

Since my first incarnation as an amateur astronomer (20-30 yr ago) I'm sure the LP has become worse, but worse that that are all the trees growing up. I used to be able to see down to -30 deg easily, now it -25 with some "cut-outs", and everything from north-east to south-east is blocked by nearby trees that belong to other people.

Ah well, perhaps we'll have some rain to wash the dust and junk out of the air, then the next clear night will be a full moon:(

Dave

[swamp thing]

Hi Chris

Nice report, some fine objects there.

Try and find yourself a site with better southern aspect if you can. There are some truly wonderful sights in this area of sky.

The veil is best seen with an O-III filter from a dark sky.

The NA nebula is huge and faint and requires an ink black sky and a RFT or bins.

Regards Steve

[WayBig]

RFT?

[swamp thing]

Rich Field Telescope

[WayBig]

Rich Field Telescope

Ah, ok. I'll have to find a dark site for the st120.