22nd/23rd July

[Tyr]

Sunday evening, what with this being a "school night" I didn't stay out too late, I setup just before 11pm and came in just after midnight.

Over the last couple of months I've been reading the deep sky guide sections of Astronomy Now and the Sky at Night and wishing the clouds away, so I remember that there was a guide on Ophichus in one of the recent issues and thought I'd give it a go.

I started with IC4665, which is a large bright open cluster near Cebalrai (beta Ophiucus), a nice object and easy to see with the finder and bins.

I'd had a look at M10 and M12 before, but right back when I got my Mak over a year ago and I was just selecting M's from the goto. So I was pleased to be able to manually locate them. This wasn't made easy by the fact that Marfik my starting point was barely visible with the naked eye (mag 3.9 sky ouch), disapearing every time I tried to get it in the Telrad window.

However I got there in the end and the hop to M12 went well, from there I worked my way to M10 and decided I'd give my new sketch book a go having bought it. My sketch amounted to a handful of stars and a smudge but at least I can look back at it for reference. Both of these globulars are magnitude 6.6 and on this occassion appeared to be on the edge of visibility with the 6" reflector. I was using both 25mm and 15mm EP's with these.

After that I went on to look at M29 in Cygnus it was smaller than I was expecting when I found it and in quite a busy area of the sky (being in the plane of the milkyway as we see it), but it's a nice shape and well worth a look.

Monday evening,

I started off at 10pm this time with the intention of getting an earlyish night, I decided to do some double star observing. The 150p was not really ideal for this as in order to split some of them I ended up using my 7mm Xcel in combination with my tal x2 barlow, which stuck out rather far from the focuser

However I'm still trying to get practice with the 150p so I left the Mak in it's tool box. For reference I was using my copy of turn left at orion.

First up was the double double, easy to see even with a pair of bins as soon as I could see Vega with the naked eye. Using my 7mm EP plus a 2xbarlow I was quite pleased I was able to split both component doubles.

Next up was Rasalgethi in Hercules, quite easy to find as well even in the twilight. I'm going to need to go back to this one as my notes are a bit brief.

Then on to Albireo in Cygnus an object I never tire of looking at, the contrasting orange and blue stars are great.

Finally for my double stars Izar in Bootes, which I was sure I'd seen before but couldn't really remember.

22:40pm I saw a very bright satellite pass over near Bootes, I was sure it was the ISS but stellarium doesn't show anything at that time, so maybe it was something else.

I decided it was now dark enough to give a couple of familiar clusters a try, first up was the globular cluster M5 in Serpens.

Then onto the Wild Duck cluster (M11) a favorite of mine in Scutum and called it a night at 11pm, to get up for work the next day.

I was actually out on the Saturday night as well, however having been out for a few many beers before hand, I didn't make anything more than a list of what I'd looked at in the way of notes.

Now after sitting down to write this theres still time for a quick look at something before bed I'm sure there's plenty to see even before midnight!

Thanks for reading and happy stargazing

Tyr

[swamp thing]

Great stuff Tyr. Hard tiring work this time of year aint it, but the rewards are there if you push yourself. Well done.

Some great objects and a nicely written report, thanks for sharing.

[rory]

great report my good man. i also am a fan of m11.

[Tyr]

Thanks

As it happened it actually clouded over a bit here last night, but before that there was a nice orange moon.

Which I think shows up how much dust there is in the atmosphere at the moment. If we get a mix of rain and clear patched next week it could be really good.

Tyr