Nice evening with UAA, 28th of Feb

[VigdisVZ]

Greetings SGL

I haven't been active for a while, due to various reasons, mainly beacause the weather has been awful. However this week's clear nights coincided with Uppsala Amatuer Astronomers regular meeting at the club house.

I decided to have a go at some "sidewalk" astronomy and packed my scope and drove to Uppsala. I had heard that Patrik was going to shoot some Jupiter and when I got there he was already set up outside the house.

After some sloppy polar alignment some interested locals started appearing and asked if they could have a look, and both me and Patrik were glad to to show Jupiter, M45, M31, M42 and M44. As always you get a really positive response, and who knows, some of the people might show up at our tuesday nights at the old refractor. (There was a really cute asian girl who stayed a looked at quite a few objects, I should have asked her out . Captain Hindsight will bother me over this one.)

After it calmed down a bit, Magnus and I started hunting some fainter objects. We got M35, M36 and M37. Mainly because Magnus is a very experience observer we were able to pick these out pretty rapidly. My alignment was a bit off but he managed to home in on them.

M81 and M82 were just visible through the LP. We also managed to find and identify M103 after some consulting my astronomy apps. New Messier!!!

I started loading my scope in the car again and started my trip home, while some of the guys stayed behind late to have a crash course in processing in Maxim.

All in all it was a pleasant evening with the guys at the club. Chris even helped me to repair my camera tripod with some parts he managed to scrouge from the warranty he had left on his tripod .

Here is a picture of me (short guy( and Magnus (tall guy). The celestron 8-inch with the CG on the left is Patriks and my 150PDS on NEQ-6 on the right.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Sounds like a great night. It is always extra good to get a chance to observe after such a long spell of bad weather.

[Double Kick Drum]

Congratulations on managing an astro-session. They seem to be rare events at the moment.

Uppsala Amateur Astronomers must be well up there in the "World's Most Northerly Astro Societies" category.

Happy hunting!

[rory]

thanks for the report, looks chilly in that pic, but id gladly take those skies at the moment .

[KevUU]

Never mind the stars, look at that alien snow glowing red down at your feet

tee hee. Thanks for the report, and well done for making something of it I'm getting dejected by so many sessions that leave me feeling "was it worth it?" at the moment, it's nice to have a reminder that yes, sometimes it is