Observing session last night

[prasadka]

Ah.. a clear night at last in the UK. So, set the telescope up at around 7 ish, aligned the finder scope and went back inside to cook dinner. after colacasia roast and spicy potato roast, came out and started looking for the first object of the day- the ring nebula. Was looking at it for a while, before it disappeared behind the trees.

The next one was the owl cluster, NGC 457.It seems an amazing grouping of stars- an owl shape is evident with stars for 2 bright eyes and about 40 other stars which constitute the wings and the legs , along with some stars strewn along the body to give an owl shape. Amazing and funny at the same time.

The next half odd hour was spent looking for M27- unable to find it, hopped on to see the great nebula in Andromeda. Now it was past dinner time. Had some dinner and armed with some whiskey, came out to brave the weather again.

There were clouds travelling from east to west, threatening to cover the overhead sky , and the easterly winds were only pushing them faster.

The next target for the night was Mars, which had just risen above, again in the east. This is still quite far away from the earth and is a reddish orange disk at 100x magnification. I think I need about 300-350 times to get any reasonable detail from Mars. I dont have any filters either at the moment.. hmm..

By now the clouds rolled in faster than I thought and ended my dream of staying awake for Saturn. Let me try tomorrow morning. Hmmm..

So to sum up, I clocked two new objects today- Mars and NGC 457.

Cheers,

Prasad

[blinky]

Sounds like you had a good night, thanks for the report!

The Owl Cluster is one of my favourites as well. Such a resemblance to the owl. It's the eyes that amaze me.

[BWBlackett]

I too had a great night last night, clocked-up another 3 Messiers M29 Open cluster and 2 Globulars M15 & M2.

Decided to have my first look at a double star and picked Albireo, the colours were great, 1 orangee yellow and one blue. Also picked up the Coathanger asterism for the first time. Someone sure had fun when he put them stars in their places!

Finally finished with two of my favourites M103 - the backwards question mark in Cassiopeia and your Owl NGC457. These two are my current favourites and I always have a quick look and say goodnight before I back up. The Owl is beautiful, each time you look at it you seem to see more detail, it's maybe just my eyes playing tricks but more and more stars seem to fill the body and wing areas.

Brian.

[Vega]

Nice report Prasad

A nice immitating double of Alberio is Almaak (Gamma Andromedae). Sometimes I find it more beautiful than Alberio! Similar colours only a much tighter pair. You need at least 100x to see them properly. I once looked for it at 40x and wondered what all the fuss was about only to realise I wasn't even splitting them at 40x . I quite like hunting down doubles as they are bright, instant pleasers. A few other favourites of mine are...

- Epsilon Lyrae (aka The double double, use at least 200x to split these wonderful two pairs)

- Mizar in Ursa major (the well known wide double and with one splitting in to a further tight double).

- Cynus 66 (A pretty double in a nice starfield background, works better at lower mag IMO)

- Gamma Leonis - (aka Algieba, cannot wait for Leo to make it's way back and see this lovely golden pair).

Vega

[Rob]

Good to read these reports... thanks for sharing. I've not yet tried the owl from my back yard. I'm looking to get either a 8" or 10" newt/dob shortly so hope to change that very soon.

Great read

Rob