M37 and M42 Short report

[Red Dwarfer]

Hi all , 

It started to clear very late last night and below the "arrowhead" of central Taurus I could just make out the shield of Orion , so I tried another window , this time a skylight at the front of the house , and most of Orion was rising behind the tree beside the house . Great to see him again for the first time since last winter ! 

It was 4.45am at this stage and far too late to start setting up equipment in the back garden , so I just grabbed the little 400/70 Celestron Travelscope and put the Seben 8-24mm zoom on it to have a go at M42 .

At low magnification , 24mm is around X 16 and the view of M42 was excellent . With averted vision the nebulosity was very bright and pronounced ... and this was standing on a chair , leaning out the skylight and holding the scope by hand with arms and elbows acting as a tripod . It was definitely worth the effort .

The second and last big target last night was M37 . Auriga was high in the sky at this stage and I thought I would have another try at M37 - I've tried this target many times over several weeks with different scopes and binoculars but to no avail ... nearby M36 and M38 were no problem before but this cluster was always annoyingly too low in the N/E sky to find but I was finally able to find it with 10x50 binoculars . 

Great to track down 2 targets in such a narrow window , literally and metaphorically in the case of M42 . 

 

 

[John]

".. standing on a chair , leaning out the skylight and holding the scope by hand with arms and elbows acting as a tripod ...."

At 4:45 am you deserve some good views going to those lengths !

[Astro Imp]

Well done for persistence and ingenuity, you fully earned you're success.