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That's another fine Messier...

JamesF

By JamesF
in Observing - Deep Sky

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JamesF

JamesF

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With a clear sky and a fair bit of time before the Moon rose I was on a mission tonight to find M83. Looking at Stellarium it appeared to be a fairly simple star hop down from either gamma or pi in Hydra but with the minor inconvenience of barely scraping eight degrees of altitude even from my fairly southerly UK location. This target eluded me on at least half a dozen attempts last summer and I finally had to give up to wait for it to reappear this spring.

The hop from pi looked shortest so I lined up on that and jumped down the stars to the west, but I just couldn't seem to find the asterisms I was looking for in the lighter sky towards the southern horizon and the whole process became far more difficult than I had expected. After switching between charts and the eyepiece half a dozen times I eventually realised that I was misreading the sky because of the lack of visible stars and ending up too far north, at the top of a "walking stick" asterism that just happened to run down to a small group of stars next to M83. From there it was a quick drop down and right there in the eyepiece was... Oh. Well all the stars looked right... It had to be there somewhere...

Eventually I managed to pick a very vague fuzzy shape out of the haze. Switching up to a 13mm Nagler darkened the sky a little, but it was still exceptionally difficult to pick out and I wasn't entirely convinced that I wasn't just imagining it. I pushed the scope away, found my way down again and there it was. A faint hazy cloud but definitely there. Pushing the scope away again and I got the same result. I'm rarely happy when I can't get a nice clear view of a target, but under the circumstances I'm prepared to say that it counts even if it is one to go on the list to revisit from more southerly climes at some point.

So, that's it. Two and a half years and 110 Messier objects. All from my own garden and all viewed at some point with either the ST80, ST102 or ST120 though a few I've found first with the 10" dob. I want to go back and revisit them all with the dob, but I'll do that as it becomes convenient. Meantime it's time to research another list of targets.

James

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JamesF

JamesF

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I still have 19 to go but hopefully that will reduce dramatically, when i'm in Cornwall next month.

If the weather is with you and you find somewhere overlooking the sea on the south coast then I think you should be able to find even the lowest of them.

James

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JamesF

JamesF

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Very good indeed. Very difficult Messier. I have only spotted it from down-under with 15x70 bins, where it was near zenith. Even so it was hard. Your report has really inspired me to have a go from here with the C8.

BTW, I trust you do not mind my edit of Hyades to Hydra :D

Good luck with finding it :) And thank you for the correction. Clearly I wasn't at my sharpest at gone 1am that morning :)

James

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Astralstroll

Astralstroll

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Congratulations! I've still got about 40 to find. Looking at the ones remaining I think a trip to Hartland or somewhere similar might be in order. With street lights and a lot of houses, 25 degrees is the lowest practical elevation to begin. Still, Hartland is a lovely spot so one night soon I may have to decamp.

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JamesF

JamesF

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I'm not sure at the moment. We discussed it in another thread a short while back so I'll have a read through that again. I really should do a bit more on the Lunar 100, but some of them involve being up at which are unsociable hours even by my standards :)

James

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Tinker1947

Tinker1947

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Well done with the last Messier, i confirm the dimmer type with Canon 1100D, 30 second exposure and the very faintest of fuzzes becomes a swirling Galaxy the like of which you could never imagine.....So whats next of you list to hunt down....

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