Observing Report 7/9/07

[GazOC]

I had what looked like beautifully clear skies tonight from 10pm to around 1am until the clouds from the East came in. I got out from around 11pm onwards, the Milky Way and Cygnus Rift were easily visible with the naked eye and I was hopeful of a good night out.

I got my 14" Dob set up (cooled in the shed), collimation was slightly out and at f4.5 I really should have given it a tweak but it was getting late and I wanted to get observing so I left it alone (I'll do it next time....honest!).

Using my 16x70 binos as spotters I turned the Dob to the globs M2 and M15, both were disappointing and I could only resolve stars using averted vision, not a night for globs then...M31 was another disappointment, I can usually make out dust lanes in my Dob but tonight there just seemed to be far too much moisture in the air. I went down from M2 to M73 the open cluster, tried to find the Saturn Neb close by but couldn't and on to Neptune that was in the neighbourhood, Neptune looked very striking even in the binos as a small blue disk.

On to Cygnus, Albereo,the Coathanger (great in Binos), the superb M39 and the OC M29, which books describe as 'non-descript' or 'unexciting' but I've always found interesting for some reason. The Veil was easily visible in my binos (usually the sign of good seeing) and I just got swept away for a while going though Cygnus and Casseopia (something I'm too prone to do this time of year!). I was hoping to stay up later for a view for Mars but the clouds put paid to that around 1am.

All in all a strange night, anything under 45 degrees looked awful but objects near the zenith looked amazing, which is a bit of a pain to get to with a Dob.

I'm sorry if this sounds like a moan, its not meant to be, but the skies looked a lot more promising than they turned out to be....still it's better than nothing eh?

[Naz]

Get the scope collimated :nono:

Good report Gaz, sounds my sort of nights viewing recently, the only difference is, I find something and then spend ages trying to identify it :shock:

naz

[Talitha]

It's nice to know I'm not the only one who gets swept away in CYG and CAS. I had the 8" SCT out last night and spent a good deal of time on the Veil.. it seemed to shimmer in the eyepiece.

[lunator]

Gaz

Glad you got out.

I was at a family BBQ last night and although I could only use the Mk1 eyeball. we did get to see a few meteors.

I have trained my daughter well as she asked Grandad to turn all the outside lights off as she wanted to see the stars better.

Cheers

Ian