Having a look at Auriga

[Sam]

Tonight I decided to plan what to look at so I thought it would be a good night to have a look at the clusters in Auriga since I hadn't seen them for a while. So I put the 8" Dob outside to cool down and had a look at my map. As I have lost my red torch (I think the kids decided playing spotlight with a red torch is fun, only they didn't return the torch!) I had to memorise where the clusters were on the map. The finder scope was pretty good to find the blurry patches and M37 was first on the list so I had a good look with the 25mm eyepiece and then with 10mm where the cluster filled the whole view. The next two M36 and M38 were also easily found and a joy to look at with both eyepieces. There are a couple of other clusters I wanted to look at but I couldn't remember where they were so decided to have a quick look at Mars (I think I could see some darker bits on the disk - might have been my imagination).

Lessons for next time:

-Check the collimation before going outside as opposed to wondering if it is ok after you come back inside and see it's miles off (no wonder the viewing wasn't that great).

-Less windy day would have been better.

-buy a red torch tomorrow!

[lunator]

LB

glad you got out

Collimation makes all the difference.

Cheers

ian