Club observing night delights

[oldfruit]

A wonderful club meeting observing night 18/01/2020

By chance we all me up at Badger Farm., our dark site in the Lincolnshire Wolds.

The sky was clear and it looked to be a promising night, early on hazy cloud came over and there was a feeling that this could be it for the night but we waited patiently and were rewarded with a lovely clear sky.

We managed to do a lot of observing tonight, both naked eye and through the telescopes.

We also managed to show some of our new visitors some of the brighter objects, which is always nice as it presents us with the opportunity to show members objects in the sky that they would otherwise probably not see.

The Orion nebula is always a showpiece through any scope but tonight through the large dob the amount of detail was jaw dropping. This object takes magnification well and when the magnification was increased more and more detail became visible within the billowing clouds of the nebula.

The Pleiades star cluster in Taurus showed clear indications of being embedded in delicate milky nebulosity and the stars were bright and pin sharp.

We had a look at the Eskimo nebula in Gemini and again tonight good detail was showing.

M81 and M82 were both looking really impressive in the large dob, M82 showing a lot of detail with varying surface brightness, brighter knots and two distinct dark lanes.

M81 showing an extended halo but not giving up the faint spiral arms, at least not tonight.

M31 in Andromeda was showing a very distinct dark dust lane and even the inexperienced new observers remarked upon it.

M33 in Triangulum was visible but faint and not giving up much detail, but to be fair I should have spent more time on this to tease more detail.

Paul Cotton drew our attention to a comet, I forget the name but the comet was easily visible and was showing a faint downward extension which was the tail of the comet.

It is always nice to see these unscheduled objects and was a nice addition to the nights targets.

We had a look at the Leo Triplet of galaxies once they had cleared the trees and they all showed great detail, the two main galaxies showed not only bright cores but also extended halo`s, and the fainter NGC member of the triplet showing a dark lane dividing the upper and lower parts of the galaxy.

The Owl nebula in Ursa Major showed a clear ghostly disc with hints of the eyes. The addition of an O111 filter enhanced the contrast of the view and made the nebula stand out more clearly against the back ground sky.

Numerous other galaxies and clusters were observed last night but the hi-light of the night for me was M51, the whirlpool galaxy, showing a clear spiral with direct vision! showing brighter areas within the arms, what was more amazing was that the galaxy was not particularly high in the sky (approx. 30 degrees) so this object will give some real wow moments when it is higher up.

Edited January 20, 2020 by oldfruit

[westmarch]

Lovely post.  Sometimes it all just comes together, the kit works, the weather cooperates and the sky is dark.  I’m just in from a bins session - no targets just drinking it all in.

John

[domstar]

Sounds like a great night. Some of my favourites there.