Given up for the moment

[Tlawrence84]

Finally, clear skies! But why am I indoors on here?

the gardens here are quote small, I can only see between south and east, so I'm fairly limited. But as the houses are close proximity, neighbours lights are reflecting off windows of houses that have their lights off!

Looking up, i can only see the brightest of stars. will wait til later as hopefully they will go bed. I hope to check out m81 and m82, but at the moment I can barely make out the Orion Nebula

[brantuk]

Orion is actually setting at the moment and the seeing conditions aren't ideal. Here in the East Mids there's a fairly clear hole in the sky directly upwards and north west - but the rest of the sky is very murky. So Orion is getting fainter as it descends into the murk. You might get M81/82 but they won't be as clear as they are in "good seeing" conditions. From a dark site with 360 degree views and no light pollution you'll see one heck of a lot more.

(The sky can sometimes appear clear but not as transparent as you would think)

[Tlawrence84]

I've given up for tonight, struggling to map stars with the naked eye to the star maps I have. I'm ordering either the skywatcher light pollution filter or neodymium baader filter.

Maybe a telrad, I can find one in stock anywhere

[Carbon Brush]

It isn't so good here either. The orange glow of urban areas miles away is quite obvious because of low level haze. There isn't as much visible overhead as there could be, again a bit of haze. So not a good night, even though at first glance a reasonable number of stars appear to be visible.

[Luke]

Murky here in Beds, the DSOs are not up to their usual glory!

[jason.p]

Beautiful clear sky here, temp dropping to -4C (didn't realise it till my fingers started to stick on the tube ). Managed M81 for the first time, not sure if I got M82, I'll try again tonight to be sure. Also found the beehive with the bins. All the old favourites were brilliant (Orion, Andromeda, etc etc). Sessions like this restore the faith