Galaxy Hunt on Home Turf - Observing Sessions in the New Forest

[dick_dangerous]

Hi All,

Another little report from me, but we've moved a bit further east. I stopped off at my parent's on the way home back in the family pad on the edge of the New Forest. My mother made a typically disapproving response when she saw the size of the telescope, but I did reassure her that a} it's quite small as telescopes go and b} at least I got into astronomy rather than drugs. My Dad excitedly pointed out that the street lamps down their road have all be replaced by new LED lamps to reduce light pollution (Surprisingly forward thinking for Fordingbridge...). My Mum then reminded him that she was working the following day and he'd better not stay out all night in the garden with me. Poor Dad...

03/05/2014 - My Parent's Back Garden, Fordingbridge

The whole day there was a horrible sheen of cloud over the sky and although it cleared when night fell, there was still a nasty halo around the moon. So rather than head out on to the Forest I stuck the telescope outside to let it cool, and had a quick session before my Mum got too annoyed and started conspiring with my wife (I keep explaining that you're not supposed to like your mother-in-law but they won't listen, they just keep ganging up on me...). The three day moon wasn't drowning things out too badly, but the high cloud made life very difficult, as did the alder trees at the bottom of the garden - as a teenager they always stopped me from seeing the wonders of Sagittarius.

Mars was my first target and it was nothing more than a fuzzy orange blob, boiling away in some awful seeing. I have a feeling this will be best left until 2016 now. My Dad came out to have a look at Jupiter, but even that was hard to make out clearly, its cloud bands fading in and out of sight. Possibly the worst view I've ever had of it. The Moon was much better and blew my Dad's socks off with a few nice craters around the terminator. One day I will learn to love the moon...

Moving on to the Deep Sky I wasn't holding out much hope, but I gleaned some good views nonetheless. Checking back with Jupiter, the seeing improved as the night progressed, but not much:

Leo Triplet - About as good as I've seen it from Bushy Park, with NGC3628 not visible.

Cor Caroli - Easily split and one of my favourite doubles with the faint blue companion to the brighter yellow primary. It's a bit of a signpost for finding several of the DSOs in Canes Venatici.

M94 - Didn't look at this in Cornwall, so I made a beeline for it - transparency was better at the zenith and I got my nice bright galaxy. This gave me a few ideas...

M3 - Not neglecting the globulars I turned my attentions to this compact ball of graininess. Didn't resolve it, but that could have been the seeing.

M106 - The highlight of this short session. I had to wait for the bathroom lights to stop going on and off, then I headed up into the Dob Hole for what has to be the most neck-breaking DSO of all right now because it is literally straight-up with a straight-through finder (That's how I roll). With my contortion act in progress I had a cunning star-hop all planned out from Cor Caroli up to Beta and onwards, finally finding it after about 10 minutes of bending over backwards. Got to say I felt rewarded; a lovely spiral galaxy viewed at an angle. After this I called it a night because my mother had made it very clear that she didn't wish to be disturbed - even at 33 I won't disobey her!

04/05/2014 - My Parent's Back Garden, Fordingbridge

My final night under a dark sky before returning to London was a bit touch and go but turned out to be better than the previous night, with less of a halo but, sadly, more moon to drown everything out. I started cooling the 'scope about an hour in advance then got outside at 10pm with the aim to try and catch as many of the Messiers I'd missed over the past week as I could. Jupiter was much clearer with plenty of detail on its cloud bands while Mars remained a disappointing orange blob.

Virgo Cluster - I'd not turned to the last page on the Virgo cluster in TL@O and had missed several galaxies. With the glare from the moon and the high clouds around it was only the Messier objects that were apparent, but I was able to cruise through galaxies like M87, M86 and M84, finally ending up in Coma Berenices.

M98, M99 - These two are pretty close to each other and it was dark enough to see the fairly well. I kicked myself that I hadn't carried on to them at Carn Brea, but it was nice to see them here.

M100 - Not listed in TL@O, I managed to hop from M98 over to this faint but fairly obvious face-on spiral.

M85 - Much brighter lenticular (?) galaxy found using Denebola and Alpha Com.

M61 - Very bright spiral galaxy. Apparently it's a starburst galaxy, which goes some of the way to explaining this.

M13 - Resolved again - it was always one of my favourite objects and I am rediscovering my love affair with it.

M53 - Fainter but still stands out. I got distinct graininess from it...

M57, The Ring Nebula - It's a bit like opening your Christmas presents early, but I'd been wanting to view the Ring through the Dob since my birthday. Finally, with no dew, high cloud or mother needing to get up early, I got my wish and was not disappointed. Even looking straight at it I could see the hole and with my 8mm BST it was a gorgeous sight. My appetite for the summer has been whetted, and even though I failed to locate the Ghost of Jupiter, this rounded off a great week of observing.

So there are my dark sky hi-jinks over for a little while. But even under the Light Pollution remember, a dark sky is good but a clear sky shouldn't be missed!

DD

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Great report of lovely session

[mdstuart]

Great report..

I used to live in Woodfalls which is near Fordingbridge..

Mark

Sent from my BlackBerry 9320 using Tapatalk

[dick_dangerous]

I used to live in Woodfalls which is near Fordingbridge..

Ah.. Woodfalls... part of the great conurbation that includes Redlynch, Hale and Lover... I had a few friends up that way - lovely area but very remote. The skies are super dark of course, and the hallowed Turf Hill is just down the road!

DD

[Paul73]

Sound like a couple of good nights.

I was with the family camping about 3 miles up the road with no telescope (offspring smallest dropped the binos).....

Glad that someone was enjoying the view.

Paul

[jnc71106]

Sounds like a very good couple of nights. I belong to an astro club that use turf hill for our obs nights

[dick_dangerous]

Sound like a couple of good nights.

I was with the family camping about 3 miles up the road with no telescope (offspring smallest dropped the binos).....

Glad that someone was enjoying the view.

Paul

You weren't staying at the celebrated Sandy Balls Holiday Centre were you? There are many legends about the name, but the dull truth is it's name after a geological formation in the River Avon.

DD

[dick_dangerous]

Sounds like a very good couple of nights. I belong to an astro club that use turf hill for our obs nights

I went out to Turf Hill at Christmas with Mrs Dangerous and a couple of friends, one of whom had a bigger telescope at the time. Those are some nice, dark skies, and its pretty quiet down that way too. We always used to park at Dead Man's Hill on the opposite ridge but being right next to the main Forest road you got a lot more glare from the cars. Hoping for an expedition down there in August with the Dob, but I'll need to hire another car for it!

DD

[Paul73]

You weren't staying at the celebrated Sandy Balls Holiday Centre were you? There are many legends about the name, but the dull truth is it's name after a geological formation in the River Avon.

DD

No. The much larger sandy balls was about a mile down the road. We were at the aptly named "Tom's Field" which is basically a field with some great views, run by Tom (& Tina).

I did wonder about the name. And, to my shame, I did snigger like a school boy.

Paul

[dick_dangerous]

No. The much larger sandy balls was about a mile down the road. We were at the aptly named "Tom's Field" which is basically a field with some great views, run by Tom (& Tina).

I did wonder about the name. And, to my shame, I did snigger like a school boy.

Paul

My grandmother, when still alive, found it hilarious, although my Mum couldn't understand what she was laughing at. We had many names for it when I was at school, none of which would pass the content filter... I know Tom's Field - that's slightly further along just outside Godshill so the skies are still going to be amazingly dark up there.

DD

[Double Kick Drum]

Little report!

I'd love to know what a big report looks like.

Very nice read. Nice to make the most of a decent sky.

Thanks for sharing.

[cotterless45]

Lovely ! I've observed from the edge of Woodgreen common and Turf Hill . It's quite special to get stars down to the horizon, with a blazing Milky Way overhead,

Nick.

[jnc71106]

I went out to Turf Hill at Christmas with Mrs Dangerous and a couple of friends, one of whom had a bigger telescope at the time. Those are some nice, dark skies, and its pretty quiet down that way too. We always used to park at Dead Man's Hill on the opposite ridge but being right next to the main Forest road you got a lot more glare from the cars. Hoping for an expedition down there in August with the Dob, but I'll need to hire another car for it!

DD

We normally hold 2 observing nights a month which take place on a weekend around the time of the new moon so perhaps we will see you down there

[dick_dangerous]

We normally hold 2 observing nights a month which take place on a weekend around the time of the new moon so perhaps we will see you down there

I'll check next time I'm going down - I'm always keen to get up on to the Forest to observe, I just don't often manage to get round to driving up there!

DD

[Pondus]

"...at least I got into astronomy rather than drugs"

What a nice 'little' report. A joy reading it.

Thank you for taking your time writing it and for sharing.

Regards

Rune