Nov 10th, the start of my winter marathon.

[DazC]

Had my best session in a long time last night.

Cooled the scope down for over an hour, printed the Moore winter marathon observing forms off and wrapped up warm!

Got outside by 20.40 and settled down for a long night.

Straight away i kicked off with No.1, Pleiades both naked eye and with my 32mm ep. Then to No.2, Hyades, again both naked eye and with my 32mm ep.

I tried for No. 3, M33, but the seeing was still not that good (loads of fireworks). No.4, M35 i got with the 32mm again. No.7 Jupiter was an easy one but I still had to spend a bit of time observing it (would be rude not to!!). No.s 8,9,10, M36,37,and 38 were nice to revisit after not looking at them for a long time. For them I used my 32mm and my 7mm eps.

At 22.01 I looked at No.14, M34 with my 32mm ep but the seeing was still not really very good. On to No.17, Kembles Cascade. I found the right place but I was not sure if i was looking at the whole of the Cascade or just a part of it ,so I'll do a bit of research on that one before i tick it off the list.

No.18, Double Cluster in Perseus was a first for me, and i think I'll be going back to that one on my next outing.

No.s 20,22,and 25 were all in orion and by 23.12 were well placed to observe, although the seeing was still not good as I couldn't make out the trapezium at the centre of the nebula.

No.26, Crab Nebula was easily seen in the 32mm but was lost in the 7mm, I put this down to the seeing.

00.55 and the seeing had rapidly improved as No.32, Fish's Mouth, part of Orion Nebula was very clearly visible. No.33, Trapezium Cluster in Orion was easily resolved in the 7mm ep, something i never get tired of going back to.

No.34, Hind's Crimson Star I managed to view but it was low over my neighbours house, so it was shimmering in the 7mm.

By now it was 01.30 and No.28, Jupiter's Great Red Spot should have been on the right side of Jupiter's disc so I put the 7mm ep in and looked,and looked, and looked, no joy. I tried my 2x barlow a couple of times, but Ithink the view was better with just the 7mm.

By 03.00 the garden was covered in frost and my eyes were starting to feel heavy, the GRS had eluded me and I had to admit defeat.

I packed my kit away and came inside to thaw out.

I'd managed 16 of the 50 objects on the list, and this was my first night. I have until the end of January to complete the marathon so I am hopeful.

Thanks for reading my report.

D.C

[Matt Scunthorpe]

Brilliant report, i've been looking for the Crab Nebula for a few nights, but just can't see anything, is it quite big or small, the smallest EP i have is a 25mm.

You ticked off a good amount of objects there though.

[Planetesimal]

I've not seen M1 yet, but according to Turn Left at Orion it's quite faint and would fit easily in your field of view in an 8" dob. The nebula is expanding at a significant speed from the source of the original supernova, with the result that its overall brightness is diminishing with increasing size. It's estimated that the Crab now is only half the brightness that it was when Charles Messier first catalogued it. It's so dim now it's unlikely he would have included it in his catalogue!

[rory]

great bunch of objects bagged there, nice going. regarding m1, im no expert but the handful of times ive viewed it i found low and low/medium power best. high power seems to just let the remnant blend away into the background. so your 25mm e/p should be okay, but its a faint (ish) object ,so avoid looking when the moons about or alot of l/p.

[Double Kick Drum]

16 objects in one night is a great haul and there are a lot of nice open clusters in your hit list.

Staying out until 3am, truly dedicated stuff. I'd giving up by 2:15am although if dew wasn't a consideration, I may well have kept going.

Thanks for sharing.

[DazC]

M1 i've only seen twice, but i've only tried to see it twice. Both times i've used my 32mm GSO ep. I do live between Nottingham and Derby, but judging by a few of the objects i've managed to see with my 130mm scope, my lp can't be that bad.

I think you just need low mag, good optics and good seeing.

It really is one of the faint fuzzies!

Keep trying, get yourself in the right spot and don't move your scope, let the stars drift across the FOV and look for a faint grey smudge moving at the same speed. A moving grey smudge is easier to see than a stationary one.

Good luck and report on how you do.

D.C

[Episkey]

Brilliant report, i've been looking for the Crab Nebula for a few nights, but just can't see anything, is it quite big or small, the smallest EP i have is a 25mm.

M1 is small, about 6 arc minutes across. It is fairly difficult to observe, but should be visible with your setup as long as you have fairly dark skies. I've seen it with my 150mm scope' in orange zone skies.

Here is a screen shot from http://www.12dstring.me.uk/fov.htm. You can plug in your equipment and see what the size of objects look like in your FOV. This is with your 200p and 25mm eyepiece.

[rory]

thats a good representation of m1, but remember theres no colour and it will be alot fainter than the image shown. but its not over difficult,i viewed it from a light polluted back yard with my 90mm refractor. good luck with your winter marathon.

[KevUU]

Crikey, that's a good session, well done

It was cloudy here lastnight, and I couldn't use the clear night saturday, so i'm feeling pretty unenthused at the moment...

[Planetesimal]

Me too. This morning I was feeling pretty down about the whole thing. I've decided that there's no way I'm going to spend big bucks on this - there's no point investing thousands on AP gear for example if you can never use it. I've even decided it's not worth upgrading my EPs. I'll stick with what I've got, for what it's worth.

[KevUU]

Nah it'll come around. I was very glad I upgraded to Vixen NPLs, and that was during the summer when nights were never properly astronomically dark. We'll all be bouncing off the walls like kids at a birthday party when the winter nights kick in properly

(apologies to Daz for the minor tangent, didn't mean to hijack)

[cotterless45]

Brilliant, Kemble's Cascade is quite long, you'll just about get it all in a pair of x8 bins, keep up the good viewing,

Nick.

[yeti monster]

M93 bagged around 03:00 this moroning, although I was cheating somewhat, being at 21 degrees N helps place it much higher in the sky