Finally, back observing

[Andrew]

I’m feeling rather shame-faced, as I haven’t made a post on the forum for over 18 months – mainly because I haven’t been out observing for about that long!

All sorts of excuses: too much work, new baby, dismantled telescope (that’s a long story).

Finally, on Tuesday I made up my mind to sort this out ~ cleaned the primary (scary) reassembled scope and recollimated, then outside.

Sky conditions were poor (patchy cloud and haze interacting with the light pollution), but initially I just wanted to check collimation and make sure I hadn’t done some unseen damage to the primary (it looked fine, but paranoia had set in).

Once happy that everything seemed to be okay I was going to call it a night, when suddenly the clouds cleared for an hour+ giving me just enough time to tour some of the old favourites (just the ones I could see easily in the finderscope since I didn’t have a star chart) ~ A little bit of everything: M13, M31, M57, M29 & M103, double cluster, albireo + Jupiter and moons (I was treated to some unusually sharp views of several bands during the odd moment of good seeing).

I’d forgotten how great it is to be out under the stars – it’s good to be back out there.

[phillc]

Good to have you back Andrew.

phillc

[ashenlight]

A very warm welcome back Andrew and it is such great news to hear you've come back to astronomy. Perfect timing too, just as the long autumn nights are getting closer

Sounds like a wonderful nights observing and just what you needed to get you back into action. What targets do you have in mind for your next session?

[Andrew]

Hard to say what the next targets will be since I'm going camping for a week and I can't fit my scope in the car (unless I leave the kids behind!). Since the skies should be fairly dark in north Devon I will probably take the binos and just work my way down the Milky Way to see what's visible - maybe a bit of wide field sketching (I've never tried that with binos).

[ashenlight]

You could always have a go for some DSOs with the binos, m13 looks great through my 10x50s with some light pollution so from a dark sight it should be great!

Looking forward to your results on the sketching front, sounds interesting

[albedo0.39]

Hi Andrew - welcome back to the Universe ! Hope the 18 months away hasn't been too painful.... Look forward to some more observing reports !

[Talitha]

Welcome back Andrew, i'm glad the cloudgods opened the curtains a bit for you.

[weareborg]

Welcome back Andy.

Sounds like you had a wonderful 1st night back. Just hope that I'm that lucky when I get back into observing.

Andy