M45 with the naked eye

[jabberwocky]

Recently I changed jobs and now drive a milk tanker collecting milk from farms, at night. I've worked nights for about 6 years now but with it being mOstly motorway work I didn't get many opportunities for stargazing.

That has most definitely changed, I spend most of my time now down tiny single track roads off the beaten track which means I spend a lot of the night in very dark sky locations, for southern England anyway.

Tonight was mostly cloudy but about 1am it cleared up and wow the sky was clouded with stars, so many I had trouble making out the constellations, I finIshed my last farm and stopped in a passing place on a tiny lane and had about 10 min just looking up, the milky way was amazing so bright and vast I could almost reach up and touch it, I had zero light glow on the horizon and looking out to Jupiter I could see a faint smudge down and to the left, well I've never seen that low in such a dark site before so had no idea what it was but could only really see it with averted vision. So I checked on starwalk on my phone which identified it as M45. I'm sure it's a reasonably common point of observation for experienced astronomers but I'm chuffed to be able to see a DSO with the naked eye, I'm even more chuffed that this great location is no more than 25min from my house and only 7-8 min from jnc 17 of the M4

What a difference zero LP and a dark sky makes. Just can't get over how brilliant the milky way looked.

[spaceboy]

Need to get yourself some bins for in the back of the cab me thinks There are several naked eye DSO's you can make out from a dark site. From memory there is M31, M45, M44, The vail (if you have a OIII filter to look through), M42, NGC2244, M20, M8, Double cluster. There is also a patch of something around coma berenices ??? But you will see so much more even with a small pair of 10x50's.

SPACEBOY

[jabberwocky]

im thinking of getting the celestron 15x70's.

[spaceboy]

15x70's even better but you may find you need to take a tripod as well