Excellent seeing conditions tonight

[John]

Despite the lack of darkness the seeing conditions here for planetary and binary star observing seem really excellent 

With my 12" dob, Saturn seems to be soaking up magnification with 350x showing the planet and it's retinue of moons simply superbly just now.

On the binary star front, Zeta Herculis showed the clearest split I've had to date and other tight-ish pairs, even uneven brightness ones, around the zenith area seem a piece of cake.

Not good conditions for faint DSO's of course but I reckon some of the nice globular clusters will be well worth a gander in due course.

Nice to be out in a T-shirt and shorts too 

[avtaram]

You're lucky, its cloudy here.

Had a good session yesterday though with the 12" Dob.

Great views of M13, what a beauty ( first time for me).

Also M57 , a bit faint but could distinctly make out a doughnut shape ( also a first for me ).

Ended the session feeling really elated.

Avtar

[davedownsouth]

Yes, pretty good here as well.  I have just set the camera up to take a couple of hour worth of shots of M13, I just hope the clouds stay away 

[John]

Some darkness in the sky now and the Milky Way is showing through Cygnus. I've just had my first views of the season of my favorite Summer DSO, the amazing Veil Nebula. Using my O-III filter and the 31mm Nagler the E & W portions of the nebula stood out really well - the E portion curving right across the 1.6 degree field of view and the river-like W portion meandering as it narrowed from it's wider estuary-like end. I also got some excellent views of The Ring (M57) and Dumbell (M27) Nebulae using my on-loan Skywatcher Myriad 9mm 100 degree eyepiece and the O-III filter. The Dumbell looked really substantial and 3-dimensional with the filter at 177x and the Ring, which I normally prefer to view filter-less, really shone out through the O-III pass band of the filter.

For one of the shortest nights of the year, an excellent one astronomy-wise 

[Helen]

Sounds like you're having fun John.  I'm sat in the Obs imagining the Heart Nebula, but been popping out for some visual too.  Hints of the Milky Way here too

Helen

[Ludd]

Even London skies have been ok tonight. Some smears of cloud and the usual LP, but by 2am there was a good display of stars. A couple of v swift bluish meteors, m27, m57 and m31, and some of the summer nebulae like the Swan and the Lagoon showing low in the south.

[cotterless45]

We've had daily and nightly cloud cover. However the day starts up, clouds arrive over steamy Middle England,

Nick.

[Ludd]

Having turned in shortly after posting the above, I've had a few hours' sleep and have tweaked a couple of photos I took with my 600D and 50mm lens, sitting on a Great Polaris mount in my London back garden.

[dick_dangerous]

Spent the day at the beach, but was out for a couple of hours until about half-midnight. The seeing wasn't great and the transparency awful around the horizon. Failed to find a few of the goodies on offer in the very southern portion of the sky, but managed to notch up M10, M9 (A first for me) and a spectacular (Isn't it always?!) M13. I also had a sly look at some of the summer triangle stuff - a dusting of M71, M57 (spectacular with the UHC filter in) and M27 (Hourglass shape easy to see with the UHC again).

Some teenagers who'd been out smoking and drinking came along so I showed them Saturn which had intermittent views of the Cassini Division and some banding on the disk.

All in all a pretty decent day and night!

DD