What did you see tonight?

[RimuRidgeRakiura]

I had my first real go with the new scope on the 17th of December 2023. I would love to say that I was sensibly restrained and spent several hours diligently observing Jupiter looking to resolve the GRS.

The truth though was that I was like a kid in a sweet shop, crazily moving from Jupiter to Saturn to the Great Orion Nebula, Carina Nebula, the Moon, the Pleidies Cluster and Sirius just to name a few.

It was great fun and I familiarized myself with the SynScan system a fair bit. Admittedly I was stuck for about 30 mins on the set up until I realised the date needed to be entered in the US format.

I messed around with the phone app link to SynScan and dabbled in some long exposure shots of the Milky Way using my DSLR.

It was a great 4 hours but eventually I had to go to bed around 2am.

Looking forward to the winter nights when the state come out quite a lot earlier!

[AL1]

Has been cloudy every night since queenstown (NZ) and forecast cloudy for remained of our trip.   I would be happy if at least I had lured clouds away from the U.K. for others to enjoy.  Seems that hasnt worked.  Bortle 3 probably better out over the tasman ocean not that i would know.  Cant complain though, one night observing in Queenstown was awesome.  Beach is quite lovely too.

Edited December 24, 2023 by AL1

[SwiMatt]

I was just out on my balcony hoping to catch a double shadow transit on Jupiter that started just before 20.30. But I miscalculated and Jupiter was still behind my roof. 

Light pollution here is so terrible now that it snowed that Albireo was invisible to the naked eye. With the binoculars it was like trying to observe at sunset. 

I had a long day and I put my gear away, so no Lunar nor planetary later, but I hope some of you will have clear skies before Christmas!

[jjohnson3803]

Clouds.  Again.  😒

[Space Hopper]

Driving from Liverpool - Sheffield - Nottingham.

Lots of rain clouds and plenty of precipitation 🙄

[maw lod qan]

Viewed the area around the crater Gassendi for almost an hour. It's incredible when you read just how tall some of the crater walls are.

Then to think how high some of the other mountains are.

After Luna, focused on Jupiter. You could make out the MEBs quite well. Some details of other bands when my eyes adjusted.

The moon made it hard to see, but the GRS was just a little less than a third across the planet!

[Saganite]

On 19/12/2023 at 21:42, Alan White said:

First time out on the pad and what a night to go out

 Conditions poor, but Lunar X and V and nice terminator details

Orion being high enough to look at

Jupiter and the GRS 

Just the medicine for me and my first week back at work full time again

happy person me

 

Good news Al !

As for observing, I have had none for at least 10 days.

[Craney]

OOps!! ...this is a visual report thread. Sorry.

Edited December 24, 2023 by Craney

[Saganite]

30 minutes ago, Craney said:

OOps!! ...this is a visual report thread. Sorry.

How dare you !....

[Ratlet]

Clear skies, but blowing a ruddy gale.  Have some nacreous clouds I observed at 1630 as well as one from my mate up in Aberdeen.

[Mr Spock]

More strong winds and rain here. At least my patio is dry thanks to the sump I put in last week. It's only a small hole so far but it's been enough to drain the water away real quick today.

[badhex]

Was just in Whitby for Christmas eve fish and chips (I feel a new tradition coming on!) and witnessed some incredible nacreous clouds, something which I have not seen or even knew existed until now.

I have done some checking and although I understand these rare nacreous or polar stratospheric clouds are normally restricted to more northerly latitudes, certain circumstances have conspired to mean that the last few days they have been present over some areas of the UK; either that or everyone reporting it is confused and it's actually just more normal cloud iridescence. Either way I've never seen anything like it! These photos are as is, no filtering or enhancements applied. 

Edited December 24, 2023 by badhex

[John]

We have nauseous clouds down here - I'm sick of the sight of them ! ☹️

Edited December 24, 2023 by John

[bosun21]

What have we reduced ourselves to? Cloud reports? 🤣.

Edited December 24, 2023 by bosun21

[SwiMatt]

20 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

What have we reduced ourselves to? Cloud reports? 🤣.

If you want something different, I saw a hare yesterday 🤣🤷🏻‍♂️

[badhex]

41 minutes ago, SwiMatt said:

Cloud reports

Isn't that a seventies jazz fusion band? 😂

[badhex]

3 hours ago, Ratlet said:

Clear skies, but blowing a ruddy gale.  Have some nacreous clouds I observed at 1630 as well as one from my mate up in Aberdeen.

Haha whoops, I guess I hadn't refreshed the thread for a while as I didn't see this when I posted! I was very confused for a second when scrolling thinking "these don't look like the pictures I took"! 

Edited December 24, 2023 by badhex

[maw lod qan]

I'm glad I took advantage of last night! Clouded over with rain on the way.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

Thick clouds in my locale tonight but last night (23rd) I saw the biggest meteor I have ever seen and I very much doubt I'll see anything like it again.  I was driving out of Aldi in Faversham and just ahead of the car as I was turning left was a light green fireball, with a reddish tail.  Right to left at a shallow angle for about a second, around 50 degrees declination, just above the roofline of the houses on the other side of the road.

I reported it with the open form on the UK Meteor Watch website and there were a couple of other similar reports from the South of England so I don't think I was the only one but it was awe-inspiring.

EDIT: Looks like some viewers across the Channel saw the same thing:

https://ukmon.imo.net/imo_view/event/2023/8195

Edited December 24, 2023 by GrumpiusMaximus

[bosun21]

6 minutes ago, GrumpiusMaximus said:

Thick clouds in my locale tonight but last night (23rd) I saw the biggest meteor I have ever seen and I very much doubt I'll see anything like it again.  I was driving out of Aldi in Faversham and just ahead of the car as I was turning left was a light green fireball, with a reddish tail.  Right to left at a shallow angle for about a second, around 50 degrees declination, just above the roofline of the houses on the other side of the road.

I reported it with the open form on the UK Meteor Watch website and there were a couple of other similar reports from the South of England so I don't think I was the only one but it was awe-inspiring.

EDIT: Doesn't looks like some viewers across the Channel saw the same thing:

https://ukmon.imo.net/imo_view/event/2023/8195

Sounds like a Bolide 🤔.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

1 minute ago, bosun21 said:

Sounds like a Bolide 🤔.

Certainly looked like the one on Wikipedia, in fact this is pretty spot-on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolide

[Mr Spock]

3 hours ago, SwiMatt said:

I saw a hare yesterday

Hare today, gone tomorrow...

[John]

After rain pretty much all day today stars started to show though thin hazy clouds at around 10:30 pm tonight tempting me out with my 100mm refractor to clear my head following the usual Xmas excesses.

The seeing was surprisingly steady and the Orion binaries put up a good show and I also panned the scope a little eastwards to catch that magnificent triple star Beta Monocerotis. What a superb sight !

Beta Mon is well worth searching out even with a small aperture scope. The 3 components are readily seen at 80x and upwards magnification and 150x shows them really well.

Here is how to find this binary star:

 

It is a cracker, I promise you. Herschel called it the "wonder star" 🙂

 

 

Edited December 25, 2023 by John

[scotty1]

On the lookout for Nacreous clouds, but I think they have gone for now. Could be a while before they are so widespread again. Last time I saw them was February 2016.

It's very quiet out and the usual sound of roaring traffic is much reduced. 

Got this shot with Jupiter lower right. 

 

Edited December 26, 2023 by scotty1

[RobertI]

2 hours ago, John said:

After rain pretty much all day today stars started to show though thin hazy clouds at around 10:30 pm tonight tempting me out with my 100mm refractor to clear my head following the usual Xmas excesses.

The seeing was surprisingly steady and the Orion binaries put up a good show and I also panned the scope a little eastwards to catch that magnificent triple star Beta Monocerotis. What a superb sight !

Beta Mon is well worth searching out even with a small aperture scope. The 3 components are readily seen at 80x and upwards magnification and 150x shows them really well.

Here is how to find this binary star:

 

It is a cracker, I promise you. Herschel called it the "wonder star" 🙂

 

 

It is indeed a wonder star, which I haven’t caught yet this year. I remember my first view, actually not that long ago, when I saw a lovely double at low magnification, and as I slowly zoomed in a third component appeared - a wonderful way to discover it!