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4th January 2022


Stephen_M

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First report in a little while.

Nice conditions in West Yorkshire. Cold but dry, a touch windy too. Streetlamp went off about 8pm, primary was out cooling for about an hour before assembling the rest. I did a little preparation with TLaO and decided to start with the first few pages of things in Orion and Auriga.
 
I first had a bit of a play with those doubles in Orion; Mintaka, Meissa and Eta. I'm still just using my Morpheus 14mm eyepiece, so they're either split or not. I have the funds now to get the 9mm, but just waiting for it to come into stock!
 
From there I had a look at the Orion nebula which looked fabulous. Orion is starting to move a little higher in the sky at 8pm, now just above the light pollution from Leeds Bradford airport. The view through my 14mm (x90 mag) looks pretty much exactly as the picture in TLaO. I'm looking forward to being about to see it a bit closer sometime soon, or maybe next year. The arm of the nebula going to the south east was particularly stunning and I hadn't seen that before. The trapezium remains as I have seen before, will split in my dob, although I can't see two eleventh mag E and F at this magnification.
 
I then moved onto looking at Sigma Orionis and Struve 761. Sigma was only E split from the rest, but I could just about make out Struve 761 split to C/B and A. Very faint and probably not visible without 'knowing' it was two different stars.
 
I can't really view lower than Orion in my garden, so I moved up a bit to look at M36, M37 and M38. Finding them involved my not very precise method of scanning about in the eyepiece until I found them. M37 was the best IMO. All very faint, but loads and loads of individual stars visible across the view of my eyepiece for M1.
 
For a bit of a break, I then went for the 'easy' stuff. Over to The Pleiades. Looking very nice and bright, I do have a 25mm eyepiece on the way which I think will be perfect for this, to be continued. I then went over to the Double Cluster in Perseus. One of my favourites for sure during my first year of observing.
 
I shuffled the dob to the other end of the garden for a look at the Andromeda galaxy. This was no different to my previous observations. Not really much to look at. Big, but the light is pretty diffuse with no discernible features.
 
To finish, I had quite a bit of fun finding M1 - Crab Nebula. This was certainly an occasion where TLaO was invaluable. I do feel lucky that in my garden I can see Zeta Tauri. Goodness knows how you could find M1 without using it. I still have found it quite difficult to use a straight-through finderscope. But on this occasion the view was just as it is in TLaO.
 
I did a bit of scanning and could just make out M1. You definitely wouldn't see it without looking in the right place and knowing it was there. It was only really observable by nudging the telescope and then you could see it move across the field. I then 'worked backward' and noted the views in the finderscope and the rigel. See below! I think I will try and complete one of these per session. After then, it was about 10:30pm so decided to call it a night.
 
IMG_0370.thumb.jpg.74023c7f48bacc2a8e11ad490ea1ffab.jpg
 
Bonus photo from this morning. I'm off all week after working over Xmas, so decided to head up onto the moor early to see the sunrise. It was beautiful. Should be out with the telescope again tonight.
 
IMG_0361.thumb.jpg.d55d0a8edaee5cff805086d362aff36c.jpg

 

Edited by Stephen_M
removed duplicate photo
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