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Ooh, it's great out there tonight


WayBig

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Just packed up and came in from a very clear but light polluted stevenage. Scope had ice on it, finder was thick with it, going to be foggy soon I reckon.

Nearly got stuck to the ota when dismounting it!

Too cold for me tonight.

Dave

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

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Ditto Stan, just rolling over my house now, wasn't expecting them to sneak up behind me! Didn't notice until they were above my head.

You must be just due south /south east of me Craig... bloomin weather! We even had a bit of drizzle here about 10mins ago. I always find it amazing how the clouds sneak up on you so quickly. One minute the whole sky horizon to horizon is crystal clear, you go inside flick the kettle on and reluctantly make small talk with the missus trying not to run into full conversation, then you take a quick look outside to make sure none of the local chavs have taken a fancy to your scope and SHOCK HORROR........its completely overcast!! :)

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Had a fab evening here.

Set up just before sunset today to have my first look at Venus through the 180 Mak.

Then left it cooling while having some food. Then spent a good hour on Jupiter. The best I've ever seen. Main bands clear with some proper detail. Shame GRS isn't this side until early hours. Four main moons very clear. The 180 Mak has really impressed me tonight.

Then left the planets and had a good browse around M45 then various in Orion. Even at f15 detail is still good.

Mist started to really affect viewing so packed up once my finder iced over and scraped ice off the counterweights while packing up.

Really enjoyed myself this evening. Even the wife came out for a look at Jupiter.

Cheers

Ian

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Had a great night with the bins, Took the Missus outside to see M42 and she also got M31 but she still thinks of it as a smudge. I'l'l have to work on her so I can get my big dob!

Also saw M35, 36, 37 and I think beehive cluster too, loads of nebuals and other smudges out there tonight, just need to learn my constellations a bit more and the fun objects before I go out

THere really is satisfaction in getting to know the skies. A goto would seem to miss the point :)

A beautiful night, clear skies to you all

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I saw a couple of meteors tonight as well! I was gazing at M34 in Persues, and a scorcher shot right across my field of view. There were two distinct trails, so it must have split at some stage. That was at about 2100 or so (UK time).

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been out since 7 o'clock trying my webcam on jupiter. No matter what I tried I couldn't seem to get a sharp image at all.

Had a go with the moon instead when it popped up, it looked great through the ep, but like a heatwave looking at it on sharpcap!! Scrapped all the ice off everything and put it all away again :)

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A superb night's viewing here in Dublin, collected my new Celestron Ultima LX 8mm eyepiece on my way home from work. Got the scope set up as soon as I got in the door and was up and running within 15mins.

Jupiter was excellent, especially through the new 8mm great detail. Got the Venus, Neptune conjunction. Spend 3 good hours outside. I decided to call it a night when the frost and cold won.

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Excellent at the moment here in Lichfield (Staffs)... did go a bit misty earlier mind, so my observing buddy and I went in for some cheese and beans on an onion baguette to warm up - downed with a hot chocolate with a good dose of Baileys whilst he was finishing the observing report!!!

He's just gone so I thought I'd sit and do a quick sketch of Mars - I'll have to post that on Monday once scanned in at work!

And to think that I was getting a little annoyed earlier in the day when Ian King had said that my new SBIG STF-8300M was not going to be coming for at least another 2/3 weeks.... I decided to offload the FSQ off the mount and put my visual TSA onto the hefty EM400.... this goto malarkey is faaaaaar easier than my usual star hoping frustrations!!!!

Plus I'm writing this sitting on the garden bench hooked up to my new wireless router that Orange finally managed to ship out to me - don't you just love that back-lit Apple Mac keyboard!!!!

I may just have another thirty minutes before calling it a night... best wishes to you all...

Happy observing and clear skies!

Damian

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I saw a couple of meteors tonight as well! I was gazing at M34 in Persues, and a scorcher shot right across my field of view. There were two distinct trails, so it must have split at some stage. That was at about 2100 or so (UK time).

Yep saw that one! Heading south to north? A distinct orangey colour as it split in to two and then burnt up...

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It was really nice to get out this evening, although I'm definitely going to pay for it in the morning, I can feel the pain already. Kind of lucky we don't get too much observing time right now as I'd probably miss it being ill.

Got a few videos of the moon to dump into registax tomorrow, I think they're going to turn out pretty poor though, AWB was on on the camera, forgot to turn it off and seeing was very wobbly even though it was super clear out there ronight. Oh and the mount wasn't tracking very well either and I think I might've had the exposure time to high in the webcams settings.

I also managed to stream my webcam via http://www.ustream.tv for a mate in america too, laptop had a bit of a seizure at one point though, totally crashed, looked like the webcam died and took the OS with it :/

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I was out yesterday evening on the edges of the Chitwan national park in Nepal. It was the first clear night I've had since coming to Nepal. Unfortunately a huge mist rose from the Rapti river, blocking half the sky from view, but I got good views of Orion and the Pleiades at least (with my ST80). I also had a look around the star fields in Auriga. My travelling companions wanted to have a look at Jupiter, which would never look good in a small achro at 44x, but we managed to make out the moons and at least 1 cloud band. My observing site was a bit constrained by palm trees but there was a power cut so the stars I could see really popped out. It was great to see Sirius high in the sky. My observing site was on the night trail of a local rhino, so I packed up sharpish when I realized everyone else had gone in and the lodge was in total darkness, and I could hear something large sloshing in the river!

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I saw the meteor, never seen one as bright before, it seemed to flash then shoot part of itself forward before vanishing.

Yes ! I saw one too last night, I was looking up at Gemini in the East and then FLASH as it flew from North to South. It was only visible for a second, but I haven't seen a meteor for many years now and was very pleased to see one last night. Mind you, it could have just been space junk I suppose !

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