Good Things Come to Those Who Wait!

[dick_dangerous]

It finally happened - after two solid months of awful weather, I finally get a night which isn't just clear, but is moonless and not on my social calendar. So I saddled up the Dob and sallied forth to the park for a bit of a session.

The seeing and transparency could have been better - tonight's sky-glow was pretty bad, suggesting that there was quite a lot of dirt up there. Eventually I got into problems with stuff fogging up too, but in spite of the trying conditions I managed to find plenty to point the scope at, and a few misses... My attempt at the Leo Trio was doomed to failure because it's in the London direction in the sky so gets drowned out by the LP. Same went for M51, which is going to be pretty difficult from the city anyway. And finally I couldn't see M1, mostly because I was trying to find it from memory and looked in the wrong place. Doh!

Anyway, here's what I did find:

• M42 / 43 - How I start most sessions at this time of year (And end them usually). The Orion Nebula is always lovely with the "wings" stretching out on either side, the trapezium glowing away (4 stars of it - didn't attempt the other two), and plenty of wispiness. Seeing it in the 6'' is a revelation - I'm sure I was getting faint greens too. Will be hoping to get out to a dark sky with the Dob again for this one.
• Sigma Orionis and Struve 761- Nice easy multiple star systems. They weren't remotely challenging so I moved up to the belt stars
• Alnitak (Zeta Orionis) - A stray cloud caused problems with this one, so I didn't split it.
• M81 / M82 - With that pesky cloud covering Orion, I took a short hop up to these two galaxies, both really clear. No sign of the supernova in M82; it's dimmed to the point where it can't penetrate the London glow seemingly...
• Jupiter - The cloud moved off and I had a quick look at Jupiter. The GRS was still visible and there was plenty of detail in the cloud belts.
• M35 - One of my favourite clusters; even more beautiful in the Dob.
• NGC2392, the Eskimo Nebula - Object of the night. A lovely fuzzy dot with a brighter interior, very obvious and very easy to find. I don't know if I hit a pocket of clear air, but it was very easy to see. Planetary Nebulae would appear to be good objects for urban astronomers.
• M44, Praesepe - looks far more impressive in the little scope...
• M67 - When I'd seen this before, it was a faint smudge. In the 150P it was resolved into countless faint stars. I say countless, given a bit more time I could probably have counted them...
• Mintaka (Delta Orionis) - Aside from a brief attempt at Rigel, where I realised my 10mm eyepiece had fogged up, and a last lingering look at M42, this was my last object; a really easy split for the 150P.

Add to this views of M93, M46, M47 and Mars on Thursday night in the ST80 and all in all it's been a respectable week of astronomy. My Messier count has now hit 60, many of them found in London. I'm just waiting for our trip down to Cornwall and a few dark skies to bring out some of those faint galaxies...

DD

[cotterless45]

Excellent report , loads to see this time of year. It's really worthwhile picking out achievable targets from town,

Nick.

[Astro Imp]

Great report DD, just shows what can be achieved from a near city centre location.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice report. Good to hear people are getting to see some stuff after what seems to have been a very torrid time

[happy-kat]

Nice report to read