Seeing should be good tonight in South UK!

[Mark at Beaufort]

7 hours ago, Littleguy80 said:

Sounds like an interesting target, Mark. SkySafari has it down as mag 16. Are you expecting the Comet to be brighter than that?

Neil I was following this information - http://cometchasing.skyhound.com/

It became too low for my Dob so I switched to the Heritage 130P. Found the exact location but no sign of the Comet.

[Littleguy80]

55 minutes ago, Mark at Beaufort said:

Neil I was following this information - http://cometchasing.skyhound.com/

It became too low for my Dob so I switched to the Heritage 130P. Found the exact location but no sign of the Comet.

Thank Mark. Very useful link. I’ll have to see if I can get the dob on that one. 

[Dave1]

7 hours ago, Pete Presland said:

Been a good night so far, the seeing wasn't to bad on the planets, considering how low they all are. Not seen any Perseids tonight though.

Ah I managed to see three Perseids last night. One of them was really quite bright, had a nice tail. 

[Special K]

Well, seeing was believing!  ?  It was a good opportunity to give my scope a firm star test after reading some recent horror stories about refractor collimation being out of whack.  Happy to say I think my scope is fine as the intra-focus was an evenly rippled pond with a purple disc in the center.  This is how Vega looked at the focal point, though it was a little more choppy around the diffraction rings as the seeing was a little wobbly:

So, I think seeing was 7 out of 10 last night!

I went for Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner and was not disappointed;  easy to find, no tail, but nice to gaze at one of these nuggets again.  Nice and clear views and so picked off a round of other favorites such as M57 Ring, the Double-Double, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules.  Hope others enjoyed the views.

[westmarch]

Many thanks to all for this thread.  After a rubbish day of rainstorms I had not even considered going out and was about to settle down with a beer when I realised that everyone was heading out!

Packed the dob and headed off to the Yorkshire Moors.  Instead of trying to glimpse a procession of planets in the gap between two houses and a lamp post, I had a tour of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars - the latter steadied slightly after 01:00 and maybe... possibly saw some dark patches in southern hemisphere.  Checked off Uranus and Neptune and I even tried Pluto but not convinced that I got that - I need to check if Sky Safari position is confirmed by other sources.

Good views of Comet Giacobini-Zinner - diffuse halo clearly seen with 15mm BST.

Wind was the main problem and had to leave the shroud off the trusses to reduce shake.

All in all an unexpected bonus night - thanks again.

John

[Mark at Beaufort]

To add to my previous thread I also wanted, last night, to try and find two reflection nebulae in Sagittarius. Both these objects appear in Steve O'Meare's 'The Secret Deep'. The objects are NGC 6589 and NGC 6595 and they sit just below M24 (Small Sagittarius Star Cloud). I was using my 12" Dob with the 13mm Ethos. I started the star hopping by going to NGC 6603 a nice faint cluster within M24 (well worth checking out) them down to Mu then up to 15 and 16 Sagittarius. Just above these stars I found two fuzzy areas - one around a close double and the other slightly to the left (Dob view).

I wanted to check this morning via Stellarium that what I saw last night was these two reflection nebs - the FOV as shown in Stellarium was the same so a success.