A few firsts

[george7378]

Hi everyone,

Tonight I had a great night until the clouds rolled in. Here's how it went:

I started by rushing outside to see the ISS after sunset. The sky was still quite cloudy at this time, and I first spotted it coming out of the yellow evening sky at mag. -2.7. I watched it cross over the roof and the trees, until it peaked in the velvet blue area of the sky which was already showing some bright stars. It faded as it slowly approached the horizon.

After this, I got the scope out as the skies were starting to clear up. When I was set up, I sat down and aimed the scope at the lovely compact constellation of Sagitta, and didn't have to look twice to see the Comet Garradd, which showed easily, even in the evening sky. I was pleased to see that the comet was sitting next to a compact little cluster of stars (I don't think it has a designation - I'll call it Garradd's Cluster) which proved a fantastic aid to tracking its movements as the night got darker and darker. It was practically on top of a dim star, which the nucleus and round coma seemed to glide past. At the end of the night when the clouds rolled in again, it was practically on top of 'Garradd's Cluster' giving the impression that it was a nebulous open cluster. I can't wait for it to fly past the Coathanger Cluster later on! This is the third time I've seen the comet.

I've explored Sagitta quite a lot, and I was suprised to come across the globular cluster M71, which I had missed all the other times! It is quite dim, and I thought that it looked more like an open cluster. It showed individual stars through the 10" scope, but I couldn't really tell the core from the halo. Glad to have finally seen this cluster before it slipped away for another year!

I couldn't miss out the Dumbbell Nebula while I was there, and I could even see it as a comet-like circular patch of light through the finderscope. It was beautiful and bright through the scope, showing off its familiar apple-core shape nicely. I could see the main shape of the nebula, and some lobes of secondary nebulosity protruding from the 'bitten' areas of the apple. When the nebula looks this bright and clear, it makes me wonder why there isn't any of that lovely colour visible!

I also couldn't resist swinging round to M31, which was easily visible to the naked eye. Its familiar shape, along with the bright egg-shaped satellite galaxy closest to it, stood out like a dream - the light from 400 billion stars hitting my eye all at once while I just sat still in the quiet garden made me feel quite special. Seeing the two delicate dust lanes of the galaxy, and then looking up to see the massive Cygnus Rift stretching over my head reminded me that our home would look very similar from out there.

Finally, I saw something I never would have thought that I would be able to see outside of astro-photos. I explored the regions around Cygnus' wings, and came across the little river of light I later found out was the Veil Nebula - a colourful band in the many photos that have been taken of it. It was very delicate and beautiful - it just looked like a silky lake of light acrhing right across the view - I looked at it from all angles for a while, and saw that I could even pick out some horizontal mottling in the stream - just like in the photos! I feel like a better astronomer for bagging this more advanced nebula with my own eyes, and I will DEFINITELY be coming back to see that supernova remnant again!

I saw some bright meteors too, one of which left a bright ion trail. A few satellites flared and flashed too.

Thanks for reading!

[m_j_lyons]

Great report...I also had a great night out last night...the Milky Way was in rare form!

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk

[swamp thing]

Nice report. some great objects in there.

Regards Steve