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A night of firsts.


Sam

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Last night it finally got dark about 11:30pm. But before then I managed to see Nocticulant Clouds for the first time (the recent pictures posted here have certainly sparked my interest). Whilst I was waiting for it to get properly dark I decided just to browse around and see what was visible - and through the 16" there's quite a lot visible even in twilight.

The first target for the night was the double double in Lyra. With the 8" I never managed to split the close doubles out very clearly - I could always see an elongation of the stars but never got a separation. With the 16" I managed to seperate them with the 25mm eyepiece and a 3 X barlow. With the 10mm and 3 X barlow the split was very clear with both pairs showing two quite distinct stars - very nice to have been able to do that.

The next first for the night (though not a DSO) was a very bright "star" just above the horizon in the South East, it could only be one thing.... Jupiter! Lucky it was just visible between a couple of trees. It was so low that I had to sit down on the ground to look through the eyepiece! I first looked through the 25mm eyepiece. There was plenty of boiling going on due to the amount of atmosphere I was looking through but the planet was clearly showing it's distinctive banding - no GRS though. There were a few moons in a line next to it as well. I put the 10mm eyepiece in and was treated to more defined banding - what a view!

Once it got properly dark I spent about 30mins just browsing the star fields of the milkyway - so many stars!! After a while I decided to have a look for NGC6946, a big face on spiral galaxy only 10mly from us. I found it without too much difficulty, though as the seeing wasn't the best it didn't stand out much having very low surface brightness - I could just get a hint of the spiral arms.

Overall another awesome session and well worth the wait. Nocticulant clouds, the Double double in Lyra and Jupiter.... excellent stuff!!

Sam

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Sounds great. Reports of good nights are always welcome with these long days and short nights. It reminds me of what is so much fun about the hobby at this time of year when it is harder to do.

Anthony

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