Keffalonia, 16th & 17th September

[KevUU]

We've just had a great fortnight in Keffalonia (a Greek island). I took my ST80 and had some great nights No atmospheric pollution and little general LP, although some local LP in the form of floodlights that I struggled to dodge and the moon waxed up to full in the second week; it was a little frustrating when those things got in the way but amazing when I got a good view

I don't want to dump it all in this one post, or to spam the forum with too many separate threads, so I'll try to batch them up a little and post through this week.

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16th September 2012

0000. Just arrived at apartment, went for stroll up the lane. Milky Way is very visible even with streetlights in view; the gap through the body of Cygnus is very obvious, dark patches and texturing within it are visible. Pretty amazing!

Andromeda is visible naked eye, faintly

Nosed around generally - Lyra, Cygnus, Sagitta, Aquila, Cassiopeia, Delphinus, Pegasus; first look at Perseus. Pleiades looks pretty cool too

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17th September 2012

2230 - 0115. Behind apartment, complete with floodlights on the site and streetlights to the side and over the field. Some cloud forming overhead and drifting around, mostly to the S. Approx VLM 5.4.

After my first look a few nights ago, and naked eye view last night, wanted to look at Andromeda through the scope again - but the clouds got in the way of that.

Trying to work out VLM, looked at Cassiopeia and figured 12 Cas is just visible at 5.4. Then noticed a smudge down and to the E of Cassiopeia, no actually a double smudge... checked and yes, that's C14 Double Cluster visible naked eye

These are listed as 5.3 and 6.1 so I'm not sure how both were visible, but was too chuffed to care My first look at this was in the Lakes and I wasn't much fussed, from my description then it seems even with the floodlights the skies here are a lot better, which is a bit of a surprise. I think I'll try to start recording approx VLM in my logs... [Post note - it was May when we were in the Lakes, so not fully dark for long!]

Anyway, despite all the excitement it seemed a little uninteresting to start with, but the more I look the more I see. The higher cluster (NGC869) looks sparser but actually has more interesting details to tease out, at x50 and x100.

The Pleiades had come up by now so I had a look at them. The other night in the scope, and last night naked eye, the blue colouring was obvious, but tonight there was no colouring at all. They were low on the horizon and there was lots of stray white light from behind me so one or both of those must have scuppered the colour. As a result they were a bit underwhelming.

I decided to go for all of the other achievable targets around Cassiopeia since the cloud was every where else...

M103 - compact oc of a few stars. Not actually that interesting but the most impressive show of averted vision yet: 4 or 5 stars visible directly at x50 but 10 or more jump out with averted vision, looks like it would be more interesting with a bigger scope

C10 - smallish loose oc, nothing to hold my interest.

Unidentified cluster - went back to widefield ready to move along and noticed something nearby out of the corner of my eye; tried to look at it but there was nothing there, looked away and could see it again... To the right of C10 by about half a degree in my eyepiece, so that's left in the sky - I think it's right by star HD10494. Switched to higher power, nothing visible direct apart from the above star but what seems to be an oc is visible averted. Seems to be a small tight cluster, looks like a cloud of a dozen or so faint stars as best I can tell. There are no DSOs shown there on SkySafari.

[Follow-up: Having upgraded, SkySafari Plus shows that this is NGC 654, a mag 6.5 oc]

C13 Owl Cluster / ET Cluster - When I looked at this before (in the Lakes again) I didn't know about the shapes and didn't have any comment on it. This time I looked closer and found it more interesting for it. I like the idea of the ET cluster and can see the shape, but I get it more as the owl.

M52 - seems to be a pretty dense oc. Can see a well populated compact star field averted, looks like there'd be much more to see with aperture... Cloud stopped play before I could get a good viewing though

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I was really excited after the first night's naked eye recce, and dead chuffed with the next night's crop - especially the one I 'discovered' myself. I had been a bit worried about getting the tripod and scope and eyepiece case there in the plane (scope and EPs were carry on...) and whether the faff would be worth it, but those first two nights were worth it on their own Now I just wanted a properly clear night with the scope...

Thanks for reading, and clear skies.

[Mike73]

Sounds like you had a good holiday Kev.

I think open clusters are sometimes underrated but if you string a few together like you did then its great comparing the brightness and shapes.

Thanks for the report and clear skies to you.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Good haul you got there!