Great morning on the Fens, bagged a triplet

[baggywrinkle]

Up at 3 a.m., I had packed the kit the night before as the weather reports were good for clear skies from 2 a.m. 

They were not wrong. Nice and chilly so no thermal disturbance. I had taken my Ed80 and AZ4 fr some general observing plus my Canon 650D and a good tripod.

I got out to a site around 3:30 a.m. between Southery and Downham Market.

My observing site was not the best as it was close to a main road (but only farm lights around) but the skies were still stunning. It gave me a chance to get my hand back in after a long absence.

Orion was rising, nice to see an old friend back, then the last of the waning moon rose along with Jupiter and Venus forming a nice triplet, not as good as it would have been a few days back but then it was cloudy here. The moon had some beautiful moonshine.

In the ED80 Jupiter and Venus were beautiful, I used my Celestron 8-24mm zoom EP. It stayed nice and sharp throughout but a pity it is not parfocal.

Below some of the wide field from this morning plus a waning moon but not well focused.

[Steve Ward]

It's a glorious morning for sure , just been grabbing a few frames of a very faint thin Moon here while waiting for the Sun ... 

[Scooot]

I looked out about 2.30 and a mass of cloud here, I'm not sure I could have dragged myself out though. -

I particularly like the second one, it looks great.

[Pete Presland]

the sky gods must have message me during my sleep as well, woke up at 4 and view in the east till dawn was magical! its what astronomy is all about, it just puts a smile on your face.

[Paul73]

Too tired from a draining week at work here and cloud until 2am so decided to go for tonight which is looking good!

I know that the mantra of the UK astronomer is "grab it whilst it is there". Hope I don't regret it.

Good to see that you folks got a couple of good hours in - I'm still jealous of that wide wide fenland sky.

Glad

[davefrance]

Nice, especially the second photo, very atmospheric. 

You are saying there are two 3 o'clocks in a day!!!!! 

[baggywrinkle]

I've got a lot of stuff to go through from this morning, need to put some of it through photoshop.

I am going to be buying in the Downham Market area so I also need to spot out some better darker sites.