Tuesday 30th Dec 2014

[David Smith]

Started out early (around 17:30) as I wanted to try and have a look for comet 15P/Finlay. Turns out it's pretty difficult from my back garden and the only instrument I could bring to bear on that part of the sky was my trusty 10x50s, at an estimated 9th magnitude that wasn't going to cut it. Had I been home from work and had the frac setup ready I may have been able to get at it briefly.

Went back out after dinner with my son who had asked if we could get the big scope out for a look around. Visited a few of the sights (M45, M42, etc) but I think the Moon was his favourite, a few "wow"s and "spectacular"s used. We used a number of different eyepieces from a 26mm wide field low power affair right the way up to my little-used TMB 4mm.

After putting him to bed and completing my evening chores I went back just after 22:00 by which time the scope had a hefty frost on. Started out with a look at Jupiter with the ES8mm but the image was very poor as the planet was still quite low in the sky. Moved across to Orion for another look at M42 and whilst checking that out I realised I was close to comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy. A quick check with the binoculars showed the comet had moved quite significantly since last nights "first contact" and it was probably just high enough for me to pick it up in the scope. Finder was quite well dewed over by this point but I managed to get enough out of it to pick up the brighter stars of Lepus and then scanned the area with my Revelation 32mm. Comet was quite obvious and in hind sight the 32mm probably gave the best views. I tried both my Revelation 20mm and ES18mm but the contrast between sky and comet coma was very poor, still a nice central condensation was visible that I could not detect in binoculars.

Went back to Jupiter after that as it was now higher in the sky and the resultant image was better. The ES11mm showed good levels of detail and all 4 Gallilean moons. Adding a #15 yellow filter brought out the darker regions nicely and swapping to a #80 blue filter gave a hint of some turbulence in the north polar zones.

By this point it was close to midnight and I decided to call it a night.

I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous new year with lots of clear skies

[cotterless45]

Neat! I found great details using a light red 23A filter, must try some others,

Happy New year !

Nick.

[FenlandPaul]

Sounds like a great night! Looking forward to capturing Lovejoy during the next batch of clear nights! Happy New Year!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[SteveB72]

Tgank you for your report, I am looking forward to seeing comet Lovejoy, and was out last night too. I started after everyone went to bed around 23:00, the moon was still very bright, so I looked at some doubles in Gemini followed by some planetaries the Little dumbell, oyster nebula, Eskimo nebula, Lemon slice nebula and

Blue snowball. There was not too much detail because of the bright moon but I enjoy finding the planetaries. By this time it was 01:00 and I suddenly noticed how cold it was, so called it a night.

A great last session of the year.

Happy new year to everyone.

Stdve