4/1/2013

[Matt Scunthorpe]

When I arrived, Colin (foundaplanet) was already setting up his refractor and dob. I was astounding by how good the skies were here, never quite seen Orion so clearly. Once i had the 200p set up, my first target was M42. I recently took a picture of this now i have the motors for the mount, and wanted to have another look with my own eyes. It was certainly very bright here, probably the best I had seen it.

Early on we looked doomed from clouds that were gradually approaching from the west, and pretty much covered the entire sky in the end, the brighter stars were visible though. I used this time to focus in on Jupiter, and even with the clouds, the seeing seemed pretty much perfect, it was a perfectly still image, i can’t remember if there were all 4 or just 3 moons visible now, but they were very sharp images.

We mainly focussed on the south skies, as the north were suffering from clouds, but eventually the entire sky managed to clear and see the seeing was beautiful. All around the south we managed to bag M44 and M41. Turning to Andromeda, it has to be the best view id ever had of it, and managed to bag M32 and M110.

After trying to hunt down M67 and not being able to see anything, we realised that all the scopes had badly dewed over, so Me and Colin had to retreat inside with our scopes, and let them dry off. It’s amazing how quickly it can build up and affect views. After a while and a hot cup of tea later, we were back under the stars, and my suspicions were right that I was right on M67 but just couldn’t see it because of the dew!

Over the course of the next hour or so, we managed to find M50, M47 and M46. Open clusters have become my favourite thing to find and look at now, just the beauty they portray is breath taking. It was also interesting using the refractor on the goto to find objects, then manually finding them in the dob and the 200p, and seeing how the view compared. Turning to Ursa Major next, and looking for M97 and M108, i realised i had lost one of my Telrad maps, so will need to print it out again, but the sky was clouding over again quite quickly now, so we both finished the night on Jupiter, comparing the view through all of the scopes.

Just as we were about to pack up, the Moon started to rise, So Colin took some snaps of it, which are on his write up of the night on his blog.

Overall it was a very enjoyable night, and a very successful night bagging 8 new Messiers.

[VigdisVZ]

Sounds like an enjoyable night Matt. Likewise I had a good time on the 4th aswell, as you can see in my report from then I haven't got 8 new messiers in 1 night, but I got 8 of them in 2 nights.

Thanks for sharing.

[Mike73]

Does sound like a good night Matt.

Did you manage to get a peak through Col's Lyra?

[Matt Scunthorpe]

I did. Jupiter looked very good through it. Also M42 was amazingly bright, barely any difference between that and say the Dob or Newt, considering the apperture difference.

[Double Kick Drum]

A highly productive night.

Thanks for sharing.

[lunator]

Sounds a great evening, I managed to get out and view Jupiter on the Saturday for an hour, it looked like it had 5 moons, the 4 moons were on one side and the double star BU87 was about the same distance as the furthest moon on the opposite side.

Cheers

Ian

[foundaplanet]

Aye, it was a good one..

Bring ya camera next time.

[Matt Scunthorpe]

Yeah i definately will. Just to play about with getting the widefield shots like you did.