First night at new pad - WOW

[Sfarndell]

I just moved into my new house last weekend and then suffered motor issues on my recenly acquired 10" SCT. After a week of cruising forums and getting advice from SGL members, I finally got around to fixing it last night. Surprisingly for a first light opportunity, it was clear skies and it was relatively dark. Whoohoo.

One of the reasons for choosing my place is that it borders a nice park and there are NO streetlights or neighbours lights shining anywhere near enough to my garden to be a disturbance. London to the south casts a slight glow.

Viewing conditions:

Cloud: 10%

Light Pollution: minimal, except in the south where London lights create a glow.

Seeing: 3/5. Turbulent atmosphere

After a quick collimation on Vega, first stop was good ol' Jupiter: Lots of boiling in the atmosphere, but 5 bands were clearly visible and there was a hint of the GRS. 3 moons observed.

Next stop was M8 - The lagoon nebula. Sadly, the london glow washed it out.

Same thing happened on M20.

On to M27 - the dumbell. This was my first sighting! Soo much more than just the fuzzy grey smudge I was anticipating - wisps of nebulosity were visible to either side of the main ? structure.

Next stop: M57 - the ring nebula. Again, this was absolutely fantastic. Cranked up the mag with a 7mm ep and it filled the view. Faint sworls of nebulosity just visible in the outer parts of the ring. I couldn't quite make out the central star, even with averted vision. Still, awesome viewing!

Albireo has been getting a lot of attention as the most fantastic coloured double, so I slewed over to that. I am also red/green colour-blind so wanted to see if this had as much wow factor for me as everyone else. WOW. Clearly distingishable and very contrasty even for me - electric blue and fiery red. Awesome. Spent about 10 minutes staring at them, but I still had one more thing on my list...

M51 - the Whirlpool. Completely washed out in London and barely visible here. Not sure whether it is my eyes or just that the skies are just not dark enough to observe this yet. Saw the centres of the two galaxies at 100x and just a faint hint of the very inner part of the arms. Can't wait to look at this one again when the skies are darker.

Would have stayed out later, but had to get up early for work. Tonight's forecast is clear skies again....

All-in-all, a great night of observing. The best part of all is how dark the skies are from my garden - no more schlepping 100kg of kit to dark sites.

[Talitha]

You're not kidding when you said WOW.. you must have been in heaven! Thanks for sharing your eyepiece with us.. sounds like your new location's a winner.

[lunator]

Very nice report

I have observed M51 from Lonfon in the 10" scope but it is VERY faint and the merest hint of haze makes it disappear.

If you can get to dark site you will be amazed at the differnce

It sounds like you have a good observing site from you back garden. Keep posting the reports.

Cheers

Ian

[Sam]

Great report! thanks for posting.

[tarqs101]

Wow! Sounds fantastic!

[Andrew*]

Very nice report - thanks for sharing that with us.

M27 always pleasantly surprises me. A few nights ago I viewed it with my 15x70s and was amazed how bright and large it was. I got some detail in it too - an arc of brightening on the SE edge. Strangely, I didn't pick up the arc on the opposite side, although it is slightly fainter.

Don't hit me, but I still haven't observed Albireo :oops: . I must do that before it gets too low.

Thanks again for the nthusiastic report

Andrew

[jcm]

Enjoyed reading your first report from your new location. Sites with little light pollution are getting increasingly rare.

Trying to convince the wife to move to Arizona but without success.

John

[Astroman]

Arizona? Where's that?