What did you see tonight?

[Paz]

I saw my cat sitting on my eyepiece case, and then I half blinded myself taking a picture! 😧

[Guest]

Well we had clear skies with some haze all day.  Surely that would break up by this evening.  With almost zero cloud cover i set the 10 inch up and got everything aligned and waited til 10pm.  I aimed for M13 as it is fairly easy to find and yeah i found it, but the haze became very evident on the RACI.  I was just using a 8 to 24 variable and what is normally a decent image was just terrible.  The scope was put away by 1015pm.  One of the nights i will get a good clear night. 

Edited June 18, 2023 by Mike Q

[bosun21]

8 hours ago, Mike Q said:

Well we had clear skies with some haze all day.  Surely that would break up by this evening.  With almost zero cloud cover i set the 10 inch up and got everything aligned and waited til 10pm.  I aimed for M13 as it is fairly easy to find and yeah i found it, but the haze became very evident on the RACI.  I was just using a 8 to 24 variable and what is normally a decent image was just terrible.  The scope was put away be 1015pm.  One of the nights i will get a good clear night. 

This seems to be a regular occurrence for you Mike. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you get some good clear nights soon. If anything you deserve it for your patience.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, bosun21 said:

This seems to be a regular occurrence for you Mike. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you get some good clear nights soon. If anything you deserve it for your patience.

Well i do appreciate that lol.  It is what it is. This year we get the added bonus of the Canadians sharing all that wonderful smoke with us.  I did the math last night and there is a very real possibility that i will not get a good clear night until they put the fires out.  There are a couple pics so you can see what i deal with. 

[wesdon1]

16 minutes ago, Mike Q said:

Well i do appreciate that lol.  It is what it is. This year we get the added bonus of the Canadians sharing all that wonderful smoke with us.  I did the math last night and there is a very real possibility that i will not get a good clear night until they put the fires out.  There are a couple pics so you can see what i deal with. 

@Mike Q Oh dear! And I thought MY skies were bad!!?? 

Really hope you get your clear skies back asap Mike!

Clear Skies from Liverpool, England

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, wesdon1 said:

@Mike Q Oh dear! And I thought MY skies were bad!!?? 

Really hope you get your clear skies back asap Mike!

Clear Skies from Liverpool, England

Ohio sucks for astronomy on the best of times.  Generally we are considered to be in the top 10 cloudiest States to begin with.  So we learn to deal with it.  Sometimes I wonder why I decided to get into this hobby lol 

[wesdon1]

14 minutes ago, Mike Q said:

Ohio sucks for astronomy on the best of times.  Generally we are considered to be in the top 10 cloudiest States to begin with.  So we learn to deal with it.  Sometimes I wonder why I decided to get into this hobby lol 

@Mike Q LOL Mike then you will understand how us brits feel about the damn clouds over here!! LOL. I guestimate, we get on average only around 1-2 cloudless nights a month over here in uk! I too also sometimes question my sanity about diving down into the incredibly deep rabbit hole of astrophotography!! LOL

Edited June 18, 2023 by wesdon1
missed a bit

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, wesdon1 said:

@Mike Q LOL Mike then you will understand how us brits feel about the damn clouds over here!! LOL. I guestimate, we get on average only around 1-2 cloudless nights a month over here in uk! I too also sometimes question my sanity about diving down into the incredibly deep rabbit hole of astrophotography!! LOL

Just a quick overview here.  Ohio sits just under the Great Lakes.  We are smack dab in the middle of the american Midwest. We catch cold air out of canada coming across lakes Michigan and Erie.  Then we also catch warm moist air off the gulf of mexico. Those air masses slam together right over my house, well it seems like they do and give us clouds.  In my part of the State we average 60 days a year of clear skies.  Clear skies are defined as 25% cloud cover or less.  It isnt just the Candian fires this year either.  Every year Mexico does their slash and burn deal.  Smoke from that goes into texas and eventually gets grabbed by the same air currents that come off the Gulf and gets deposited up here.  Not sure exactly how much of that we are getting right now as it is really just getting going 

Edited June 18, 2023 by Mike Q

[John]

Yay !!!

Just managed to split Antares with my 100mm Tak at 225x. Did a little sketch and the position angle corresponds almost exactly with the Stella Doppie position angle. The separation is 2.62 arc seconds and the component magnitudes vastly different at .96 for Antares and 5.4 for the grey-greenish tinted companion star. Plus it's very low down from here. First time with 100mm of aperture. Very chuffed 🙂

Good, steady seeing currently, helps a lot with this sort of thing !

Edited June 18, 2023 by John

[John]

8 minutes ago, John said:

Yay !!!

Just managed to split Antares with my 100mm Tak at 225x. Did a little sketch and the position angle corresponds almost exactly with the Stella Doppie position angle. The separation is 2.62 arc seconds and the component magnitudes vastly different at .96 for Antares and 5.4 for the grey-greenish tinted companion star. Plus it's very low down from here. First time with 100mm of aperture. Very chuffed 🙂

Good, steady seeing currently, helps a lot with this sort of thing !

Here is a blurry pic of my little sketch:

 

[Mr Spock]

What did I see tonight? Nothing but the rain. According to my gauge 24mm of it...

[Epick Crom]

10 hours ago, John said:

Yay !!!

Just managed to split Antares with my 100mm Tak at 225x. Did a little sketch and the position angle corresponds almost exactly with the Stella Doppie position angle. The separation is 2.62 arc seconds and the component magnitudes vastly different at .96 for Antares and 5.4 for the grey-greenish tinted companion star. Plus it's very low down from here. First time with 100mm of aperture. Very chuffed 🙂

Good, steady seeing currently, helps a lot with this sort of thing !

Great job splitting Antares with 100mm of aperture John🎉

Especially as it's so low down for you guys.

[scotty1]

20/6/2023

About 23.00 

[Nik271]

The 3 days old Moon looks great tonight, just high enough to be still above the treeline for me at 10pm. The elusive Vallis Snellius is showing rather well as a sequence of indentations in a straight line going between the craters Snellius and Stevinus. 

[John]

I managed to split Antares again this evening with my 100mm Takahashi at 225x (Nagler 2mm-4mm zoom). Cloud cover allowing, I get about 30 minutes of viewing of the super giant star as it transits from behind our neighbours roof and then is obscured by tree branches. 

The photo below shows how low this target is from here - around 14 degrees above a rather cluttered S horizon !

Dodging some wispy clouds here and there also managed a nice split of Zeta Herculis and the pleasing tiny "snowman" form of the sub-arc second pair of Lambda Cygnis.

 

 

Edited June 21, 2023 by John

[Mr Spock]

Still cloudy here and CO predicts the same for the next week 😡

[Stu1smartcookie]

12 hours ago, Nik271 said:

The 3 days old Moon looks great tonight, just high enough to be still above the treeline for me at 10pm. The elusive Vallis Snellius is showing rather well as a sequence of indentations in a straight line going between the craters Snellius and Stevinus. 

Great Pic Nik , saw the moon last night and really wanted to view it through my scope , alas , living on a new development which isnt finished i refuse to put my scopes out the front of the house because its like the Sahara out there, so , no moon for me at least until i can view it from the back garden . 

[Nik271]

Thanks, @Stu1smartcookie, I hope you reclaim your western sky back from the dust! Just to clarify this is not my picture but a simulation from https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5048, very handy for planning moon observations.

[Stu1smartcookie]

On 18/06/2023 at 14:18, Mike Q said:

Sometimes I wonder why I decided to get into this hobby lol 

I think a lot of us can echo your sentiments , Mike . So many variables have to "line up " .. if its clear then the sky doens't get truly dark at this time of year  or its partly cloudy or rainy or too much wind . 

TBH unless its luna or planetary i tend to steer clear of setting up , in the height of summer . 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Stu1smartcookie

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

I think a lot of us can echo your sentiments , Mike . So many variables have to "line up " .. if its clear then the sky doens't get truly dark at this time of year  or its partly cloudy or rainy or too much wind . 

TBH unless its luna or planetary i tend to steer clear of setting up , in the height of summer . 

Its weird here.  The clouds roll in come November and stay with us pretty much all winter.  January and February can have clear nights and when they are its awesome, but since cold and I dont get along i am not out much.  So far it seems to me that our best month for observing is August.  When it cools off after dark the skies clear up.  Basically we get 3 months of good skies, 3 months of maybe skies and 6 months of crap lol

[Stu1smartcookie]

46 minutes ago, Mike Q said:

Its weird here.  The clouds roll in come November and stay with us pretty much all winter.  January and February can have clear nights and when they are its awesome, but since cold and I dont get along i am not out much.  So far it seems to me that our best month for observing is August.  When it cools off after dark the skies clear up.  Basically we get 3 months of good skies, 3 months of maybe skies and 6 months of crap lol

We say in the UK we have three months of winter and 9 months of bad weather 😂,which is a little unfair as we had a fantastic summer last year ... this year is more normal , cloud , wind , a bit of rain here and there . We take what we are given of course . But the good news is , the skies will slowly start to darken as from yesterday . 

[John]

Having learned long ago about the vagaries of the UK weather, in all seasons, I keep my telescope and mount options extremely simple to minimise setup and take down times. Last night I had around 45 minutes of decentish sky conditions so out went a scope, I got some observing in, and back in it came when the clouds intervened. 

If my setup / take down times were more than a few minutes I doubt that I'd still be doing this hobby 🙄

[Stu1smartcookie]

1 hour ago, John said:

If my setup / take down times were more than a few minutes I doubt that I'd still be doing this hobby 🙄

i suppose the worst conditions apart from the obvious blankets of clouds are spells of showery weather . Panic stricken quick teardowns of equipment that took 30 minutes to set up ! Only for the rain to last 3 or 4 minutes . Almost makes one start to cry ! 

[DirkSteele]

8 minutes ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

i suppose the worst conditions apart from the obvious blankets of clouds are spells of showery weather . Panic stricken quick teardowns of equipment that took 30 minutes to set up ! Only for the rain to last 3 or 4 minutes . Almost makes one start to cry ! 

Have a toilet tent ready to go to throw over the scope at a moments notice. They are shaped perfectly for most scopes and means you can wait out a quick shower or take down a scope without fear of rain hitting the optics or electronics. Neighbours might wonder why such a thing is in the garden. Does not get a second look at star parties.

[DirkSteele]

The Baker Street Irregular Astronomers held our June meeting in Regents Park on Tuesday. After some white light solar was ended by the trees in the park, we moved on to a 2 day old moon (hard to find in a bright blue sky) and then Venus which was easier and showed some cloud markings in both my Tak FS-60Q and the. WO GT81 that had come along. From there we nabbed Mars. And just before meeting end, picked up a double star or two for some beginners who had not seen one before. And we had a nice display of lightning in a cloud that passed just to our north in the last 45 mins of the meeting.