A random night in the Alps

[AndyWB]

I was away last week in the Alps mountain biking near Bourg St. Maurice. Naturally, it was cloudy most of the week, but on the last night it was clear! I'd taken my bins with me, and one of my friends is getting interested in astronomy, so after the pub we found somewhere dark to consume scotch and take a look around.

The Milky way was prettily visible, so I figured I start around there. Now, lying on your back to look at the sky looks odd, so I though we'd try lower - and there was Sagittarius! I was very surprised; it was above the mountains. I suppose we were quite high too, but it must have been the effect of being further south too.

Anyway, on the off-chance I turned the bins that direction, and immediately saw a fuzzy patch. "That looks like the Lagoon Nebula", I thought, "Na, can't be, if it was the Trifid nebula would be ... oh. Right there. With M21. And that would be the star cloud... Omega Nebula... Eagle Nebula..."

So, after a little guidance, my friend and I managed to see M8, M20 & M21, M24, M17 and M16. I mean, the views weren't what you'd get through a scope - but through my cheap binoculars, I was stunned.

We paused at this point to quaff more Talisker while I tried to explain what a nebula was and why we could see them. And, come to that, to explain that you don't normally tick off Messier objects at a rate of one every fifteen seconds or so.

Having consumed sufficient scotch, lying down now did seem a good idea. I looked for M57, though I suspected it'd be too small - and I couldn't see it. Then I decided to trawl Cygnus, which was overhead. Curiously, I didn't manage to see M29 - I didn't remember it being hard to find. I'm sure it was in the FOV. The Veil nebula was a long-shot - and wasn't there. Instead, by friend had a long and happy trawl through Cygnus just being happily overwhelmed by so much to see.

Running dangerously low on whiskey, we resolved to try to finish on a high - so I found the Andromeda Galaxy, loitering between the trees. This seemed suitably large and impressive, so we called it a night as we had a long drive the following day.

I'm still stunned by how much I could see in Sag with 10x50s. Still kicking myself that I didn't try for M22 - what an obvious one to miss!

[BinocularSky]

Thanks for the report. The change of altitude and latitude makes quite a difference, doesn't it! M29 can be difficult to pick out; once you know the "shape", it gets easier. How Messier thought it could be confused for a comet though....

<pedantic_git_mode>

I have only one quibble:

Talisker ... low on whiskey

Talisker is whisky! (Bushmills is whiskey).

</pedantic_git_mode>

[ollypenrice]

This is my sky, more or less, and I love it. A drop of Talisker never does any harm either!!!

Olly

[AndyWB]

<pedantic_git_mode>

I have only one quibble:

Talisker is whisky! (Bushmills is whiskey).

</pedantic_git_mode>

Ah! That's always confused me. I'm from over there on "the mainland", but I enjoy the works of our Scottish brethren...

[BinocularSky]

...and, of course, real astronomers only drink Islay malts...

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

...and, of course, real astronomers only drink Islay malts...

Quite so, mine is the bottle of 16 y.o. Lagavulin, though Talisker is not half bad, and I do enjoy some of the Speysides as well. Scapa from Orkney is also very good

Come to think of it, I'll drink any decent (malt) whisky

Nice report, BTW, I spent a lot of time hunting that section of the skies with bins, and my eldest bagged 17 Messiers in that region during a single evening last year. A real smorgasbord of Messiers