Last night's session

[Mr niall]

Had a couple of hours last night - was by far the most successful night I've had since I started observing last December. Picked 4 targets from Turn Left at Orion - the plan was to bag one but easily managed to bag the first three - none took more than 5 minutes each to find which is unheard of for me! Ended up not bothering with M5 - will save that for next session.

Weather was beautiful with two exceptions; dew (was like observing in the rainforest) and the moon (was like observing while under interrogation in a holding cell) but while the seeing progressively improved as the moon moved away, the dew became a real issue and cut the night short - I don't have a dew shield yet and my sketching equipment was getting damp anyway. But it was late by the point and I was tired so probably the right time to stop. Not super happy with sketches - I think M57 is a little big and the dumbbell, well I'm not sure why I bothered drawing it, I did think the only dumbbell anywhere near my telescope was yours truly! .

But a great night, found what I was looking for and bagged three new targets.

 

[Knighty2112]

Good sketches. Well done!  

[Hayduke27]

I just recently found the ring and dumbbell myself.  They look good!

[Paz]

Nice sketches.

[F15Rules]

On 02/09/2017 at 15:39, Mr niall said:

But a great night, found what I was looking for and bagged three new targets.

Excellent sketches!?

Can I ask you where you source your observing log books and dark sketch templates from?

Dave

[Mr niall]

11 hours ago, F15Rules said:

Excellent sketches!?

Can I ask you where you source your observing log books and dark sketch templates from?

Dave

Thanks - I’m quite luck my wife owns a bespoke stationary company so she knocked it up in a couple of hours for me.

But I couldn’t talk her into sitting with me and designing my own log so printed a pile off from backyard astronomy - there’s a few templates on there. Really good - i printed two to an a4 sheet but, as my wife angrily pointed out, they’re not quite exactly A5 so watch for that - there’s nothing worse than an angry wife with an industrial paper guillotine!

Its just hard backed and waterproofed and then spiral bound. I keep trying to convince her there’s a market for these but cest la vie!

couple more pics here:

Edit - sorry it’s homebuilt astronomy - 

http://www.homebuiltastronomy.com/downbino/HomeBuiltAstronomyProjects-ObservationRecordandSketchingForms.html