Excellent night outside

[ian_j_kirk]

Wow what I night last night turned out to be. Not only did I get to observe on one of the clearest nights I have seen since I took up astronomy, I even managed to get the wife out to look at the perseids and even take a peek through the scope. We started out looking at the meteors and saw several long bright trails, and even a potential fireball which was so bright that we could see it even though it was on the very periphery of our vision. I'm not sure what promotes a meteor to a fireball but this must have been close! A very long trail which left a streak in the sky, and was bright enough to significantly light up the sky for about 1.5 seconds. Taking the opportunity to try and get SWMBO more interested into this hobby, I thought I would show her some of the other sights. Alberio was first, nice and crisp with the two distinct colours suitably impressed, and Andromeda, although a large white smudge, drew a satisfying wow when I explained how long the light from there had been travelling. While looking at Andromeda, I noticed a feint patch of light to the bottom of the view, but didn't pay much attention to it and moved on. The warm bright orange of the garnet star in Cephus was also a nice sight, which kind of made up for the "oh is that it" that the small feint ring nebula got. It was at this point that the cold got to her and she trundled off to bed. Her loss! I caught a pass of the ISS from a Westerly to South eastern direction, and I thought, how hard would it be to track in a dob??? I have a 200p and had my 18mm BST eyepiece in and had a go. At first it was hard to track due to having to move the dob in both alt and az directions, but the ISS soon levelled out and I only had to move on one plane and managed to keep it in the eyepiece for about 5 seconds! I couldn't believe it. I could see the shape of the main body and the solar panels quite clearly, and they looked like the sun lighting up tin foil. INCREDIBLE! The night didn't end there either. As I mentioned, the sky was amazingly clear, and for the first time I was able to make out the milky way from my back garden stretching all the way over the sky. Looking up using my mk 1 eyeballs, I saw a hazy patch of light near Cassiopeia and trained my scope on it to see if it was indeed a patch of light or a stray cloud. I couldn't believe it when it turned out to be the double cluster. I didn't know that the double cluster could be a naked eye object. Getting tired now I thought I would get one more look at Andromeda before I turned in and found her very easily again. M32 was also easy to spot, but as I was looking around switching from direct to averted vision, I noticed that the feint fuzzy patch was still there from earlier. Was this m110? A quick post on sgl today and a few quick responses from the kind folk on here seem to support this. All this and I bagged another new messier object during the course of the night made this one of the best sessions ever and one that will be very hard to beat for a long time. Thanks for reading and clear skies. Ian

[AlexB67]

Nice report. I was out the same night and had some good views also, excellent skies that night

[cotterless45]

Neat report, we've had some really superb nights recently. It's been hard to finish the session with so many super targets . Hope that this is the kickoff to a great season.

Also tracked the ISS in a 200 Dob. Am I the only one who waves at them ?!!

Nick.

[WaveSoarer]

That's a very nice report. I was also out that night and the sky was beautifully clear.