A night with the M's

[Fypunky]

Finaly those twinkly lights along the prom and the holiday makers have ended here in Blackpool so the night is far less light polluted and we can enjoy better viewing, that and the clock change makes it far better for me.

So last night the scope was set up just before the sun went down to cool ready for after tea observing. Six thirty pm, wrapped up and off we go, first on my list Alberio, just love looking at this double with the colour contrast. M27 was the first of the M's, although visible it was still a little struggle with the amount of lightpol still around, M57 was next up, the first time I saw this was from a dark site so I wasn't expecting great views like that, to be honest it wasn't that bad and with averted vision could just make out the hole (new ep's so much better).

Time for a change of direction, East was the destination and M36,37,38. I love these open clusters, even with the light pol I could resolve most of the stars and they looked stunning, again the new ep's have made a big difference, after observing these for a spell I moved onto the crown jewels, M45, stunning, simply stunning.

10.30pm and its getting a bit cold by now so I decided to have a go and see if I could see M81 & M82, only just was the answer, very very faint smudges in the sky, I was pointng north right above Blackpool town centre, to be fair I was pleased to see them but it was hard work.

Overall an excellent session, and I was in bed for 11.30pm! Now looking forward for Mr Orion to wake up that bit earlier.

[MarsG76]

Nice report... see if you can catch a glimpse of all of the 110 Messier objects over time.

[cloudsweeper]

Nice work!  I was doing something very similar, only a little earlier.

M-count: 58 (but lots of other stuff!).

Doug.

[jetstream]

Excellent report!