A Night of Two Halves

[JamesF]

Having had an excellent night on Friday I had six Messier objects left to find and set myself the goal of finding M7 this week on the basis that whatever happens in August, between the Moon and the turning of the seasons it will be lost to me until next summer. According to Stellarium it was going to be a really tricky object to find anyhow as it wasn't going to get much more than four degrees above the horizon at any point.

I had the ST120 out cooling early and took it up to the field about 11pm. The sky was clear of cloud, but the seeing was very poor with LP from Taunton particularly being scattered as much as fifteen degrees up from the horizon. Nonetheless I was on a mission. Clearly the trees have grown an awful lot or the configuration of Stellarium is not quite perfect as its idea of where M7 should be was clearly higher than it could be looking at Kaus Australis which was the initial point for my star hop and pretty much the same altitude. Kaus Australis was actually below the maximum height of the tree line though I could see it through a gap, so I was feeling fairly negative about my chances of finding M7, but as I panned westwards across the treetops it suddenly popped out in a small gap. I had to wait for the trees as they moved to be able to see it and I'm not actually sure I could see the entire cluster at any one point, but there was nothing else in Stellarium that it could be and based on the few stars and its alignment with the "tail" of Scorpius I'm certain I found it. I still feel somewhat cheated though. Short of taking a scope to the south coast or finding a hill with a completely clear southern horizon I don't think there's much else I can do though.

My "backup plan" for the evening was to find M30, but it was too early and Capriconus was lost in Taunton's light haze anyhow, so I left the scope out and returned to the house to grab some binoculars and spent an hour sitting on the patio watching the sky, looking for meteors and satellites (I saw at least half a dozen of each including what I believe was an Iridium flare, but it disappeared over the house before I could catch up with it). I've never had a "good" summer for observing, so I took some time to try to familiarise myself with the orientation of summer constellations and to revisit old friends such as M13. Away from the LP around the horizon the sky was much clearer and far more enjoyable to look around.

Around midnight the sky seemed to suddenly get much darker. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Taunton has some sort of "switch off" policy at midnight. There certainly seemed to be a marked and immediate change in the darkness of the sky. It was also getting a fair bit colder and when I returned to the scope it was running with dew. Capricornus was visible by this stage though still affected by the haze on the horizon. I found the semi-circle of stars around zeta Capricorni and just swung the scope around a little to the north to find M30 quite easily. In the haze it appeared very dense, somewhat like an unfocused star and no detail was visible, but I have at least found it and Capricornus will be higher in the sky later in the year for me to look at it again.

Although the evening had started off disappointing, spending time with the bins and finding M30 in a clearer sky more than made up for it so I decided to call it a night and returned to the house to dry off the scope.

James

[Double Kick Drum]

Congrats on some tough finds (at least from out latitudes).

It is also nice to see a flurry of activity in the Observing Report section, once again.

Happy days (er nights) are here again!

[JamesF]

Indeed they are, at least for the moment. I'm trying to make the best of what we get in case it doesn't last

I actually forgot that I woke up at about 3:30am and on my way to get a drink I looked out of a window to the north east and saw Venus chasing Jupiter before the dawn, my first view of either this time around. If I'd been a little more compos mentis I'd have had a look for the Pleiades and caught an ISS pass, too. I'm "home alone" this week though, so there's every possibility of catching up with some of those without getting dirty looks from my wife or being woken up at 7am by children bouncing on my head.

James

[webboid]

Really good effort James.

I am a little envious of your location as my southern view is restricted to -8deg because of the house roof but I still saw M10 M12 & M14 last night

I'll have to wait until I get out to my astronomy club & hope they have a reasonable view of the south.

[rory]

yeah, well done on a low object. i cant get anywhere near that from home .