Learning every day

[Eastman]

This evening I had to go out, nice clear sky but only time for a little session with the 130p flextube.

So I went to Auriga, M37, M36 and M38.

But instead of looking  further on I stayed on these 3 great open clusters.

Tonight for the first time I saw that M37 has a really nice orange central star! I never noticed before.

Makes me wonder does it belong to the cluster?

Stayed on 43x 

Had a great time with only 3 object, but saw more in these 3 than ever before.

greets  Gert

[Stu]

Nice one Gert. It certainly pays to take your time and draw the detail out of each object.

Looks like the orange star you saw was HD39183, mag 9.2, an orange-red star. Can’t say I remember it but will certainly look out for it next time!

[Paz]

Nice report, I'm a fan of picking a small number of objects and really focussing on them.

[Pondus]

I really like those Auriga clusters.  M38 has an interesting faint companion in the same fov (lowish Powers),  the small open cluster NGC1907.

[Charic]

1 hour ago, Eastman said:

But instead of looking  further on I stayed on these 3 great open clusters.

 

Ive been looking at the same things for the last 4 Years?
My views to the South are obliterated by a single street light, and limited all round due to structures and trees, so the only way is UP!

I can lay on my back and look straight up at the Pole, in-fact the Pole Star was placed for my benefit directly above my  corner fence post, just sight the post, and look  straight-up, there it is, cant get any easier, and its there every night when the seeing allows, so anything between Cassiopeia and Ursa Major are my regular targets, but there is a downside here too!  street lights and more of them 

Due to my local limitations, I can never go out and just look at everything! Its always planned and I could spend up to one, maybe two hours,  just looking for one target, as its quite hard to see the galaxies around Ursa Major from my garden, but one night ( hopefully during a power failure of the street lights ) I'll see one if not most of the galaxies that  can be viewed.

One other major issue I have, fast approaching, is the Summer twilight. The Skyliner gets little, if any use during the Summer season. 

[Eastman]

That's not a great FOV @Charic .

But at least you can look at Cassiopeia.

Some great clusters there.

[domstar]

M37 is one of my favourites. Low mag is the best but this week I looked at it at 90x for the first time and it was interesting in a different way. Investing a bit of time on it really does pay dividends, doesn't it?