A bit of this and a bit of that

[Astro Imp]

Had a clear sky last night - Yippeee!!!

Recently the first thing I have done after setting up is look at M31 with my bins to see what the transparency is like, last night it was not brilliant but not the worst I've seen.

Lined up on Polaris and used this to align the Telrad and finder. While doing this easily split Polaris so the seeing wasn't too bad.

First target M15 before it disappeared over my roof. At 23x it looked like the typical faint fuzzy and I thought it wouldn't be worth upping the mag but gave it a try at 107x and was quiet surprised to see a bright core and a  glow fading away into the background using averted vision.

Next up Gamma Arietis (Mesarthim) an easily split double showing two equally bright white suns.

Auriga was now coming into view and I viewed the three Messier clusters, not a great view as my neighbours had decided at this moment to turn their outside lights on nearly blinding me. 

I took a quick break waiting for the lights to be turned off.

Spent a long time observing The Pleiades, what a wonderful sight.

A quick drop down to the Hyades and then thought I would give M1 a try, not really expecting to see anything as there was still quite a bit of light from the neighbours and it was still low in the sky. I wasn't really disappointed to see nothing.

By this time Gemini and Jupiter were making themselves known and had a quick look at Castor which was easily split, then spent the rest of the evening glued to Jupiter, the views were not great as it was still quite low and above the roofs. 

All in all an enjoyable evening and nice to be out again.

[MadAlbert]

Nice report.

We're getting a quick-fire repeating pattern of cloud - sky over here and bloomin' windy, too. Looking forward to it dying down a bit...

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice report indeed. It has been a while since I have had anything to report on the DSO front. Dismal weather over here. Glad you got a chance to see some stuff

[wheresthetorch?]

Looking good in Sussex tonight. Scope out cooling already, blanket up to obcure streetlights, cats trying to trip me up as I carry stuff out. . .

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[Bart]

Best night in a LONG time. Struggled through patchy cloud earlier but cleared up and been out from 8-1am. Brilliant. Got some great objects in and a double shadow transit on Jupiter. Quite low so it was bubbling, but did manage to get some good seeing after persevering!! Got the intergalactic wanderer, cats eye, Orion Nebula, the Eskimo neb which is a favourite of mine was a bit washed out by Jupiter which was a little disappointing. Uranus, Christmas tree cluster, M35,6,7,8, lovely in the 10". Maybe should have rolled out the 16", but wasn't expecting such a long productive session. Great night though. Happy guy here

Night all.

Barry