An excellent evening...

[JamesF]

Clear skies were forecast last night, though I had to get the scope under cover earlier in the evening because it was raining and I wasn't expecting much after that. Around 10pm however the sky was clear and bright except for the horizon which was still very hazy. I had my newly-cleaned barlow to check out and I wanted to see how well my new illuminated reticle EP worked for setting the scope up for the webcam. Orion was very clear to the south west as well, so I could do the star count for the CPRE survey.

The new EP made life so much simpler than skipping up a range of EPs until I got to something close to the webcam and then swapping, usually with a few false starts. I found Mars with the RDF, centred on the reticle, added the barlow, re-centred on the reticle, switched to the webcam and there it was in the middle of SharpCap's display. Excellent. Very pleased indeed. So, I set off some imaging runs for Mars and settled down to have a look at the rest of the sky.

M45 was very clear and I could easily see six stars, possibly seven though I wasn't prepared to be certain about that. Around to the east M44 was also very clearly visible with the naked eye, even with direct vision. I got out the binoculars to have a look and as soon as I put my eyes to the eyepieces I could see a large fuzzy blob. Something was definitely odd there as I don't recall the Beehive looking like that. It took a moment to realise that it wasn't the Beehive at all, but I was looking straight at M67. A quick slide up and I had a lovely view of the Beehive for the first time in almost a year.

Three of the first Messier objects I ever found were M36, M37 and M38. I remember it took me hours one cold January night to find them all. I recalled that there's a "bent tuning fork" asterism just at the bottom of Auriga that leads up to them, so I quickly located that and within a matter of seconds I'd found all three. It's amazing how easy it can be when the seeing is good and you know what you're looking for

Orion was well past south by this time, so I thought I'd better get on with the star count. If you're not familiar with the idea, the CPRE runs a survey each year to count the number of stars visible in a box formed by joining the stars Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Rigel and Saiph (those four don't count, but anything else in the box does). I did the count three or four times and the best I managed was twenty-five stars. I skipped a couple I thought I might be able to pick out with averted vision but really wasn't sure about.

By 1am the seeing was starting to become poorer so at that point I happily called it a night. Clear nights with good seeing have been a real rarity over the last nine months or so and it felt very positive just to be out and enjoying the stars again. Short of seeing Betelgeuse suddenly going supernova I'm not sure it could be improved upon

A few more clear nights are forecast for the end of the week. Here's hoping they're just as good.

James

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice report. I trust M33 should be M44. Did you get some good shots of Mars?

[JamesF]

Doh! Yes. Fancy putting the "3" and "4" keys right next together like that on my keyboard. I'll edit the post to correct it in a moment.

Haven't looked at the Mars captures yet, but even on-screen the polar region was quite distinct so I'm hopeful. Of course now isn't the best time to be working on Mars. I'm looking forward to it getting higher in the sky a little later in the year.

James

[Double Kick Drum]

That sounds like a great night. I can just detect the Beehive with the naked eye in my back garden.

M67 is under-rated in my opinion. Fainter than its illustrious companion it may be but it is still a very rich cluster.

I wonder how long Betelgeuse would take to go from mag. 0.5 right up to -16 (or brighter?). A period of prolonged daylight/twighlight or two afternoon suns (depending on what time of year it goes) would be very very weird and Orion would never be the same again!

[JamesF]

It was a bit of a faith-restorer to be honest. The weather here has been so rubbish for so long that I've been getting quite frustrated. Clear nights haven't exactly been common since last Spring and on quite a few of those I've looked up at the sky and seen stars near the zenith twinkling madly. When it's like that you just know it's not going to be great.

James