Observing Sat 18th February - Sibbertoft

[cyborg421]

Hi all,

There will be an observing session tonight but not at Glooston.

The new site we've found is nr Sibbertoft, 2 mins from Husbands Bosworth airport. We are also drawing people across from Warwickshire so there should be a few of us.

Andy it's about 5/10 mins difference travelling for you, Steve it's about the same time as travelling to Glooston.

I'm looking to be there at 8 O'clock. If you would like to know where the new site is please pm me with your email and I will send you a Google Earth kmz file that will show you the exact location.

Hope to see you there.

Simon

[andyboy1970]

Sorry I missed you but I had to head off to work at 8pm.

Next time then.

Andy

[cyborg421]

Hi Andy,

I think I missed you by about 5 mins. We had 10 people overall last night which was a really good turnout.

Simon.

[andyboy1970]

I had one of those nights, brought my laptop and camera however forgot my tether cable!!!!

Not a bad site is it?

[cyborg421]

Great night last night. We had 10 people there in total which is a great turnout. We had a whole range of scopes there, some came with just binos or cameras but had a chance to look through scopes if they wished.

The night was clear but there was a strong wind which was quite chilling. Make sure you are protected in all areas body, feet and head with layers then you can focus on the skies rather than the temp. It gets a lot colder than you think especially in country areas like Sulby.

I had a look at all 4 planets available last night. Venus was quite low down when I arrived and was caught in the cloud on the horizon. I could see the bands on Jupier but the seeing wasn't perfect due to a thin layer of high cloud. Mars improved as the night went on and at the end of the evening we tried a range of filters to see if we could pick up the detail of the plolar caps and any surface filters. The blue and yellow filters seemed the most effective. I saw Saturn towards the end of the session but it didn't get high enough up to see very clearly.

I also observed the double cluster in Perseus (wow!), Pleaides, Orion Nebula, Owl cluster, Owl nebula, Whirlpool galaxy (at the request of Karlos), the Andromeda galaxy amongst others.

The Milky way was visible and it seems to be about as good a site as you can expect being in the Midlands.

I look forward to a repeat session very soon. Thanks to all who made it over.

Simon