A (long overdue) great night's observing

[ScottS]

So, having had the best night's observing so far this year, I'm now back in the warm with a hot chocolate and biscuits, feeling very pleased with myself.

Having hauled the Dob out into the garden for a cool down, I didn't really have a plan as such for any particular targets. So I decided to start off with the usual suspects and spent the first hour on M42, Jupiter and the Moon.

Jupiter was excellent with the fantastic seeing tonight and I managed to get my clearest view of the GRS ever. Also apparent was some sort of disruption of the Northern Equatorial Belt, maybe just a larger than usual swirl in the belt.

M42 was looking sublime as usual, and I couldn't resist a quick peek at my favourite stars Betelgeuse and Sirius which of course are in roughly the same area of sky. Gorgeous colours from Sirius again.

Moving onto the Moon, I don't think I've ever seen such detail. I was able to pick out crater wall features and shadows from mountains / crater centre peaks.

By now I'm just wandering aimlessly round the sky and decided to revisit the first open clusters I ever saw in Auriga, M36, M37 and M38 of course. I had actually forgotten how good these clusters are, especially M37. I also managed to bag M34 and M35 at the same time.

A quick look for M1 produced nothing as I suspected with the LP in the garden, but I've seen this target before anyway, so I moved back onto Jupiter again to see that the GRS had apparently rotated out of view.

With the cold now getting the better of me I decided to call it a (successful) night and finished up on the Moon again.

I would normally spend more time on just a few targets, but there's just so much to see at the moment, and with such good conditions, I couldn't resist.

90% of tonight's observing was with my 18mm Starguider. It's such a good EP for so many targets. The only exception was the addition of my 2.5x Barlow for the Moon views.

So, very happy with all that. Not particularly adventurous targets, but with the LP from my back garden I still managed some spectacular views tonight.

It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has been observing Jupiter tonight that may have seen any unusual cloud formations. Maybe this is a common feature of Jupiter's cloud belts, or maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks. Probably the latter

Anyway, more nights like this please.

Scott.

[cotterless45]

Neat, spent a happy hour on Jupiter last night. Seeing was good with a full transit of the GRS with a white spot preceding and more tears to the belts following. The northern belt had plenty twists , turns and darker areas to it's boundaries. What you can get up there depends on how good the seeing is. I used about 160- x220,

Nick.

[AndyWB]

I was out last night with my 130p. At x130 I could see the GRS and I think the white spot too; it was near rotating out of view, and I was confused 'cos it looked like there were 2 spots, and that the belt was kind of 'missing' in front of it. I didn't consider another spot as being a real possibility; figured it was my eyes and the relatively poor seeing.

The northern equatorial belt seemed unusually dark to me, but I'm wondering now if that's just in contrast to the southern belt, what with the GRS and the swirls that leaves behind it. I'd love to see an image of it.

[rory]

Nice going Scott . I had some great lunar views last night , one set of craters and shadows along the terminator made out a human skull feature which grabbed my attention for a while .

I also managed Jupiter for a while and even mars . The later was low down at the time and there was a lot of turbulence . But even naked eye it gives a fantastic orange/ copper colour .

[Bart]

Hello Scott

There has beeen a lot of dicsussion over the last few days of that object close to the GRS. Some members posted images of it in the forum. I also saw it a few days ago and though it might be the GRS, just with terrible seeing. It is indeed a separate object. Nifty. Another thing to observe on Jupiter. Jupiter is the planet that keeps on giving. Belts, moon transits and shadow transits, GRS, a bit of colour, just fabulous.

Great to hear you got out there. The last 3-4 night here have been fantastic. The transparency last night was outstanding. Got a few more galaxies. Almost used a low mag eyepiece all evening as it was very pleasing, especially finishing off immersing myself in the Virgo Galaxies. Simply mesmerising.

[AlexB67]

Lovely report and glad you enjoyed it , I did not get a Jupiter session yesterday ( for a change) , but had a early night and got up in the uncivilised hours. I found skies to be very good at this time in Bristol. Mars had given me the best views yet from my backyard with some surface details I had not yet seen. Transparency was good too for deep sky ( by my city standards ) , when I came to check some out of focus stars to check my collimation it is not often I have seen airy disks that still. There were next to no wobbles in Mars.

some nice galaxies seen too. Hurrah

Had I been out earlier , and as John showed, it could perhaps have been a good night for doubles even to have a go at a splitting the pup.  usually Sirius is a very difficult one for me anyway with roofs often in the way when it is highest, this makes this target a real double dog of a split anyway.  If I am ever going to get there I'll need a helping hand form a better site and perhaps need a bit more power, a red filter. One day hopefully this will be mine