2/3 June: Nice Sky!

[Special K]

Sunday night definitely our best locally so put the scope out at 9pm for advance cooling. I've been keen to get Mercury as best as possible with its current swing round the sun, and learned from previous mistakes. Venus is a bright yellowish disc but by the time it is dark it is much too low to make out details now. Mercury is high enough at 10:15ish to attempt some details and seems the same color to my eye. However I detected a gibbeous Phase that was pretty evident. Cracking out the color filters, the Orange #21 seemed the best effect on contrast though I didn't try the Blue #80.

By this time Vega and Arcturus have appeared. I struggled a bit but decided to come back to it after midnight and let this summer twilight fade a bit! The return to Lyra was glorious! Vega gives a lovely blue shine and after some bumbling around I landed on the double double Eta to get back in the swing of things. A wandering tour of Lyra included the best view yet I've had of The Ring Nebula M57. Must have been very transparent conditions and the UHC filter had a nice effect too. However my biggest ambition was to bag the "other double double" in Lyra Struve 2470 & 2474. After more fiddling around I found the best thing was to shoot for Lambda from the Steph cluster. From Lamda, I just screwed South halfway toward 17 to land on them. 130x gave a nice view of these little guys. The companions look redder to me but not sure if they are just because they are faint. Thanks to Cotterless45 for pointing these out in a previous post and I got there eventually!

I rambled around Cygnus a bit and took in Saturn at the final curtain, of course. I'm shocked by how few hours of astronomical night there are near solstice but I'm loving the warmer air! Clear skies.

[Double Kick Drum]

Nice report. Mercury may not be that much to look at (apart from its phase) but is quite elusive and I found it quite satisfying when I first saw it. The Ring nebula is nice and tolerant of some light pollution for those city bound astronomers.

[cotterless45]

Neat report, although these summer nights are short you can get some stunningly transparent conditions. Saturn has been spectacular and there are plenty of doubles and clusters in the Demi darkness,

clear skies,

Nick.

[Stu]

Very nice Special K. I've still to see the 'other double double' so will give it a go next time. The well known one looked pretty fabulous last night.

Stu

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice report. i might have a shot this evening. The skies look good, so despite the grey nights being upon us, I should try and give the scope a spin.