13th May - First DSO session

[SionR25]

Was clear all day hear yesterday and thankfully the clouds stayed away until 12am last night. Seeing as I had no school to wake up for today I stayed out all night using my new Turn Left at Orion and went DSO hunting.

First thing was first, I made sure my RDF hadn't been knocked and lined up on Saturn and spent a while viewing that (once started its hard to stop ). Happy that I had seen all I could I turned my attention to M3 seeing as M13 was still just behind the corner of my house. Took me quite a while to find, about 15 minutes, but once I saw the faint grey smudge in my 25mm and got it centred I worked up through my eyepieces until I managed, just, the 7.5mm barlowed. I preferred just the 7.5mm so took the barlow out and carried on viewing.

By this time M13 had rounded my house so I swung to that. Have looked at its location extensively on Stellarium so knew exactly where to go for this and got it centred and moved to the 7.5mm. Really impressive, nice round grey smudge filling up about half the FOV.

All still clear and clouds just appearing on the horizon but I still had two objects I wanted to tick off my list, M81 and M82. Once again two objects I had looked at on Stellarium so I found it easily and got it centred. Moved to my 7.5mm and got one in the FOV. This again was impressive being the first two galaxies I had seen through a scope. Just knowing what you are looking at gives you a big wow factor.

Cloud cover kept growing so I decided to call it a night and head in. All in all probably my second best viewing session, second only to seeing Saturn for the first time.

Sion

[David Smith]

Nice write up. Glad you had a good session. M5 is another good target at the moment.

[Double Kick Drum]

Thanks for sharing.

As well as M5 in Serpens, you may also want to try M92 - another bright globular cluster in Hercules.

M57, the Ring nebula in Lyra is another goodun'. It is easy to find and with 5 inches of aperture, you should just be able to see the hole in the middle with a little magnification.

Happy hunting!

[Doug]

Hi Sion

A very nice report well done

Doug

[swamp thing]

Nice write up Sion. Great objects in there. Next time you're observing in hercules, over by M13 remember to checkout M92, that's also very bright and easy to see.

[SionR25]

Thanks for the suggestions, will just have to wait a few more weeks for the next clear skies

Sion

[m_j_lyons]

Very nice first deep session! Completely agree with galaxy observing...expectation management is very important. But knowing what you are really seeing is so impressive.

Happy hunting.

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