The Lions share, a gathering of galaxies

[rockystar]

5 minutes ago, mapstar said:

No worries Lee I'm not sure if Monday is going to be much good but tonight is looking good.

can't travel on Sundays as my wife goes out and i need to stay in with the kids. Soon though

[faulksy]

fantastic report damian, felt like i was there by your side. dark skys and big dob its like a lotto win. nice one mate. good luck tonight and look foward to your report

[Stu]

Lovely stuff. Really nicely written report, a joy to read. Well worth all those long hours building the scope now that it is finally doing what it should be doing!! Looking forward to more very soon ?

[mapstar]

Cheers for the kind words, hopefully more tonight from our usual spot 

[faulksy]

13 hours ago, mapstar said:

Cheers for the kind words, hopefully more tonight from our usual spot 

well how did it go

[mapstar]

1 hour ago, faulksy said:

well how did it go

Very poor Seeing last night.

The amount of moisture in the air affected viewing to the point where at 2am I was back home sat with a beer watching TV before heading for the sack.

Scope was set up by half 9 and I had a good long look at Jupiter in the twighlight. The GRS was on it's way around the latter half of it's transit and overall the atmosphere didn't look too bad.

I went onto M13 and this looked quite nice although at the time I put it down to still being twighlight for the lack of contrast and slightly mushy look. I caught NGC6207 just above which again was faint.

M44 wasn't looking spectacular either? But this was slipping away towards the west so I was still trying to convince myself it would be a good night.

Swinging round I went back to M13 and hopped across to the planetary nebulaNGC6058. I struggled for any fine detail other than a fuzzy star which didn't impress. I switched eyepieces but still no joy.

Moving on I decided that it was dark enough to have a bash at some galaxies in Virgo. I was hopping from Porrima and on my chart could see a fair few targets surrounding gamma Virginis.

Try as I might I just couldn't tease any out? So I moved on making my way up the east side of the constellation without stopping to look at anything.

Finally settling on Omicron Virginis so I thought as the finder view was getting more difficult? High cloud? No? Quick check yes dew! On everything!

Dew heater set up and a coffee later I tried again. Definitely in the right place my target was the Markarian chain.

Working across was a chance to pick up a few more but it was getting more difficult. High cloud still lingered and I really struggled on NGC4178 an edge on galaxy just outside the main body.

I did view the chain but it wasnt anything like a good view at best mushy. I didnt take any notes.

I tried a different approach with the double double in Lyra which looked lovely and then tried for the central star in the Ring as I'd read Simon had done in another thread. Half an hour later after averted Vision, imagination, more mag, less mag, scope jiggling and more or less everything else I gave in! Simon has my admiration and far better skies

A quick look at Mars with Sirtis Major showing between shimmers and Saturn low down and I threw the towel in.

The light shroud is on the washing line drying off with thoughts of the Mercury transit and maybe try again tonight?