dark Skies in Devon

[Guest]

Just back and tiem to write up from a trip down to AstroAdventures in Devon. Having had a fairly soggy Kelling it was fantastic to see the Milky Way as it should be, arching over the sky. I had taken the 20" down to try and do some hard core observing of Abell planetaries but the sky did not co-operate for that. The last night however was superb and I managed to get to see some gret detail in NGC 2174, the Rossette, NGC 1501 in Cam, NGC 1535 in Eridanus and a good view of 1535 in Taurus. I did manage som Abell planetaries in Abell 4, 10, 21 but I had seen those before. N7331 and its compaions was greta as was Stephans quintet, just to show I do not only observe planetary nebulae. Orion of course was superb and although not ont he Friday nigth one of the previous nighst was not so transparent but very steady and I had a superb view of the trapezium as well as the E and F stars. Could not see the others although ti was quite low. The highlight I think was a probable observation f the globular cluster palomar 2 in Auriga.

The trip was not without incident however as one of the Telrads broke with heavy corrsion on the battery terminals and the Argo suffered a broken batter y clip so the back up DSC was pressed into service. It gets like NASA sometimes.

Owen

[Doc]

Despite all those little hiccups sounds like you had a great time Owen. And as you say your probable sighting of PAL2 must have been great as this is one very hard GC to see.

[Talitha]

Thanks for posting Owen, and congrats on seeing Pal 2! Sorry to hear of the equipment glitches and the weather, but it sounds like you made the most of the available open sky time.

[dobserver]

Glad to hear you had some good viewing there - shame about the weather. We are going in February for a week and we are so looking forward to it already.

Steph

[ollypenrice]

Hi Owen,

Stephan's is always a bt of a killer. I have 'so-so to lousy' eyesight and can still get it regularly here but am never really sure about five. What did you think? Four, yes... ohh but five? Stephan actually found the little devils in Marseille which is not far from where I live. But they hadn't made light bulbs at that time...

Cheers,

Olly

[Guest]

The problem with getting 5 is spltting the central pair. The normal 4 are realtively easy but the fifth one requires good transparency and good seeing. Are you guys really affceted by streetlights down there?