WAG meet - 4th July 2019

[Stu]

Just a quick report about our club meet last night. My little group meets once a month and either drown our sorrows in the pub if cloudy, or observe on the village green. Skies are around mag 19.1, not bad for around these parts.

The initially good forecast for last night seemed to worsen, and the satellite showed high cloud heading our way, and thickening as the night went on. I was hopeful of a decent gap for some planets and a glimpse of the 2.3 day old moon so I setup at about 8.30 and others joined over the next hour. I think there were nine of us in the end.

I had the Tak on my Vixen Sphinx mount, and started off with a quick view of a very plain sun before it disappeared behind a tree. Nice to see but pretty uninspiring!

Next to join was a new member who had recently acquired a Celeston 4SE and needed some help setting up. We struggled a bit with the Celestron Star Pointer Pro which didn't seem to have the range of adjustment to get bang on. We managed to get it so targets had to be put at the top of the outer circle, but it wasn't ideal. Over the course of the evening we tried to get a successful alignment but it kept failing. We set up north and level, then went through a three star align, just picking the brightest three stars but it would not work. Any suggestions gratefully recieved.

Alignment aside, it seems like a lovely, compact little scope which gave excellent views of Jupiter even with fairly basic Celestron Plossls. It just shows what can be achieved.

Essentially we just spent a pleasant few hours observing Jupiter, and then Saturn once it rose. A couple of the new members had not seen either through a scope before and were delighted. Best though was a local chap who came out to chat and have a look. He was gobsmacked by the views of Jupiter, disappeared off for a keebab then came back to be equally gobsmacked by Saturn later on. Really nice experience and hopefully he will join us at future meetings.

Simon, he of tortuous Tak indecision 🤣 made the trip to meet up and have a look through the FC100. I can't say the conditions were that conducive to seeing what the scope is capable of, but at least he got some time at the eyepiece which may or may not help the decision making process!

I picked up the Moon when it appeared from behind a tree and managed to get the scope on it. Looked quite washed out behind heavy haze, but craters were seen, so better than nowt. The only other object seen was the Double Double, which again delighted those who had not seen it before. I must say it was a very clean looking split with pretty textbook stars and big black splits between them, really nice.

Cloud stopped play after midnight sometime so the alarm was pushed back to 6.45 in the expectation of lighter Friday traffic on the way to work. A successful night and some new people initiated into the delights of planetary observing.