Wonderful Night

[Epick Crom]

Hi my fellow stargazers! 

After 3 cloudy nights got a clear sky last night to explore. Lepus was my first target. An underated constellation in my opinion. Observed the globular cluster M 79. Beautiful structure with a delightful double near by! Orion was up next and I immediately turned my 10" dob on the Orion nebula. Always breathtaking seeing M 42, it looked spectacular and deep green, greener than I've ever seen it before. The trapezium E and F stars showed clearly at 150x mag. The fine details and structure visible in M 42 was amazing 🙃 I scanned the belt of Orion and split the double star Alnitak there. Alnitak was just bathed in beautiful blue nebulosity.

I ventured over to Aries next to see my mate Uranus. Located it and cranked up the magnification to 267x, my current highest power. It's beautiful green disk was resolved but I couldn't see any moons. Constellation Puppis was my final destination for the night where I located the delightful trio of open clusters M46, M47 and NGC 2423 all in close vicinity of one another. First time viewing them in my 10", M46 and NGC 2423 looked dense while M47 was more open and expansive. Resolved the yellow double star HD 60997 in the centre of M47. Wonderful! All in all a very satisfying night of observations. Thanks for reading and clear skies to all😊

[John]

No chance of clear skies here at the moment but it was nice to read your report anyway

I have seen a couple of Uranus's moons with my 12 inch dob but they are pretty challenging from here. Neptune's brightest moon Triton is a little bit easier.

 

Edited January 11, 2021 by John

[Epick Crom]

19 minutes ago, John said:

No chance of clear skies here at the moment but it was nice to read your report anyway

I have seen a couple of Uranus's moons with my 12 inch dob but they are pretty challenging from here. Neptune's brightest moon Triton is a little bit easier.

 

Sorry to hear about you sky situation John, hope it clears soon! I have yet to discover Neptune, I think it will be my next target. Cheers