22/01/15 - Had a Good night Seen Lovejoy, Jupiter, M45 and M42 from dark skies

[acharris77]

Hi all, as some of may remember I posted back a few months ago after being away that I started my GCSE in Astronomy. Well for the first time since September we had a reasonably clear sky as normally every Thursday it is cloudy and we are unable to go out to do observing lol. Seeing was about 3 on the Antoniadi scale, but murky lower to the horizon.

So we go up to the local mountain and setup the scopes, etc and first thing I did was use my bino's to find Lovejoy and found it to the right of the M45 near Aries looking nice as a green-ish, fuzzy blob. So having found him, I moved my 5" scope to it and while the seeing didn't allow to see a tail, I could still see detail and it looked quite good in all his green glory.

Of course I had to view my favourite target in the winter sky, M42 so I did and the trapezium looked lovely and I spent a good 5 mins I enjoyed it. Of course M45 was a binocular target and view it and I was a happy guy. Then I moved my scope to Jupiter and there he was, bands on show and 3 moons.

Overall it was a great night of observing and it was just nice to get the scope out twice in a week, as before that it must have been a year since I had used the scoped. So this is my report of my observing to share with others. Thanks for reading.

[michael23]

Sounds like a very satisfying session.