Full sky haul !

[cotterless45]

Beautiful dark and clear sky , the wind dropped and we got to just below freezing. Sky packed full. Orion glided westwards leaving a clear open Monoceros. First shock was a superb view of NGC 2261, "Hubble's variable Nebula" must have been at the peak of brightness , lovely view. Not seen this one before , worth catching.

Caught a lovely bright disc of Uranus in the south west.

Trawled through the open clusters of Monoceros . The best I have highlighted, NGC 2232 gave a very bright large "fish " shape , really lovely. Had a look at "Hinds crimson " star in Lepus , but not so bright just now. Then some overlooked Messier's, M41, M67, M48, and M46.

Leo was quite high and a lovely view of the bright streak of NCC 2903. Ursa Major gave a very surprising bright view of the galaxy NGC 2841, between Talitha and theta.

Sight of the night was a very tight binary , Struve 1338 (SAO 61411) in Lynx. This has closed to 1.0" . It took several changes of eyepieces and moving the star around the fov , before I got a clean split with a hair width between them . That was at x240 using a Vixen LVW. That's some decent seeing ! That's a distance of 43AU up there.

Light cloud started up , a really lovely session , under clear skies ! Nick.

[Alan White]

Sounds great Nick, you were lucky in your area with being clear.

Here on the East side it was fairly solid cloud last night.
All of us local to me are getting starless fever!

[Mark at Beaufort]

Great report Nick. Too many clouds last night when I tried to observe. I checked my log and I have not seen NGC2261 must give it a go. 

Best wishes for 2019 - hopefully we might meet up again this year.

[wookie1965]

Brilliant Nick I too had a brilliant sky spoiled once again with my mount playing up very frustrated now.

[Paul73]

Great haul there. A real mixture. Some old friends in there, plus some new ones for me. Ngc2232, Hubble’s Variable and Leo 54, are now firmly on my list to seek out and enjoy?. Thanks.

My night was beset with equipment issues. How on earth do I have equipment issues with a manual Dob?!? Thank goodness I don’t do motors, GoTo, imaging, Eq mounts. I’d never get any observing done!

Paul

 

[mark81]

Nice report, some great little clusters there.  I've been wanting to check out those Monoceros clusters for the last month but haven't had a chance due to the cloud.

Great sketches too!?  

[Eastman]

On ‎09‎/‎01‎/‎2019 at 10:14, cotterless45 said:

The best I have highlighted, NGC 2232 gave a very bright large "fish " shape , really lovely.

Great report Nick, NGC 2232 is now on my to do list.

[PaulB]

You had some good luck with the weather.

It's been cloudy so far this year. Your report is very good and makes me wish I could use the Mk1 EB again.

Bloody weather !!!!!!!

[mapstar]

I've missed quite a few night's of late but nice to read you're getting out.

Hubbles variable neb I have looked at a few times and once got told by some astronomer it was the cone neb .

Must get out as Leo is well up and I'm missing the galaxy hunting.