05/08/2016 Lovely Clear Skies

[Pig]

Lovely clear skies in the early hours between 1am & 4am were the cleanest I have experienced for some time, even the Milky way could be seen fairly clearly  I spent most of the time looking between the North & Easterly areas of the sky (back garden view) I dual mounted both scopes and calibrated them to within a whisker of each other and got two lovely contrasting views with a simple turn of the head. 80mm Esprit with the 8mm Ethos @50x & the 110mm Starwave with the 21mm Ethos @36x thus the views were pretty fantastic to say the least.

My objective was to be statuesque as possible so I simply connected to Sky Safari and went for every NGC I could find without having to alter my seating posture too much. I started with Cassiopeia and followed the line down through Perseus, Auriga, Taurus and the start of Orion...so quite a lot on view.

The most startling and unexpected event of the evening was a very bright object right next to Dubhe at exactly 12:03am, it was kind of like an explosion that expanded very brightly indeed and then took about 30 seconds to completely dim back to nothing !!!! At first I thought it was the ISS but this passed over here at 11pm !!!!! Not a bad start and much more welcome than a grasp on the shoulder.

A quick summary ........ So many targets bagged to list and a very big thank you to the GoTo on this occasion for making it possible  NGC's 129, 7789, 7786, 637, 282, 225, 744, 659, 654, 1582, 1664, 1778, 1857, 1912, 1907, 1893, 1027, 957,869,1647,1746. M52, 31, 110, 32, 45, 36, 34 & 37.

Some special moments..........It was nice to see Pleiades through the 21mm Ethos for the first time with the whole of the object fitting perfectly with the FOV and with some averted vision a lot of lovely twinkling was going on, the double cluster was also looking the best I have seen it in a very long time with the two Ethos delivering some snappy colourful views. The 8mm came into its own when viewing Almach and Albireo two very similar doubles with their lovely blue and orange colours contrasted against the black sky.

Lets hope this clear sky continues tonight as forecast  bye.....

[Davesellars]

Nice report!  It was certainly very transparent in those hours once most of clouds had shifted out of the way just past midnight. Nights like these are rare and one has to take the bull by the horns ....   Well done on observing a good selection of objects and taking good advantage of it...

Could the flash of light have been an Iridium flare?

[Davey-T]

Glad you had a good night Shaun, I spent a lot of time looking out to see if the forecast clear sky had materialised, it never did and still hasn't 

Dave

[Pig]

Just now, Davesellars said:

Nice report!  

Could the flash of light have been an Iridium flare?

Thank you Dave it certainly was a nice night. I really do no know what the flash was but it lasted some time where as normally the flares are pretty short in duration.

[Pig]

1 minute ago, Davey-T said:

Glad you had a good night Shaun, I spent a lot of time looking out to see if the forecast clear sky had materialised, it never did and still hasn't 

Dav

Thank you Dave, I must admit right up until 11pm it was looking cloudy and we also had some heavy rain around 10pm, this rain no doubt aided the seeing.

[Knighty2112]

Nice report and session. Well done!  

Hoping for some clear skies tonight & over the weekend to see some Astro stuff again!  

[jetstream]

Great report Shaun! I hope you get continued excellent skies

[Pig]

41 minutes ago, Knighty2112 said:

Nice report and session. Well done!  

Hoping for some clear skies tonight & over the weekend to see some Astro stuff again!  

Thank you my friend, it will be a very welcome change... getting some nice solar in at the moment also

42 minutes ago, Knighty2112 said:

Nice report and session. Well done!  

Hoping for some clear skies tonight & over the weekend to see some Astro stuff again!  

Hiya Gerry  and thank you buddy, we have clear skies forecast again tonight so I may move into the front garden to get a southern view

[faulksy]

great session piggy sounds like you had a lovely time. thanks for posting

[Pig]

Yes thank you Mike, I am loving these Ethos  Its been very warm here today with some nice sunshine but its looking a bit thundery in the distance

[laudropb]

Very nice report of a productive session. Cloudy here unfortunately.