Observing Report 14th Nov 09 Celestron 80ED

[oceanheadted]

Aberdeen Astronomy Soc's dark sky evening last night so I went up to the site just after 9pm - nobody else there. Dirty rotten stop outs! The site's in a forest and very dark. Conditions were cold with a light breeze. No cloud and the atmosphere seemed stable. The milky way was clearly visible overhead.

Set up my c80-ED on a Skywatcher AZ-3 mount. It's so easy to set up. It's biggest drawback is is the grease on mount the mechanism goes totally solid lower than about 6 deg C. My default choice of eyepiece is a Meade 4000 32mm.

The first target had to be the Pleaides, M45. It's such a plum, all those bright stars. I love the string of 6 or 7 that run up to the middle of the asterism. I was reading a thread on SGL about nebulosity in M45 last week. Averted vision showed what I thought was nebulosity, but when I panned across to some other bright stars I saw a similar effect. Ho hum!

Looking to the north Ursa major was above the horizon. I was keen to seek out M101, I spent quite a lot of time time looking for deep sky objects in Ursa Major last year, with not much success. By lining up the 3 middle stars of the "handle" of the constellation and panning across, I found my target. A large smudge that almost disappeared when you stopped moving the telescope. Averted vision showed it though.

I then decided to look for NGC7000 before Deneb dropped down behind the trees. Results were inconclusive, maybe some slight nebulosity.

Cassioppeia and Andromeda were pretty much directly over head so out of reach of my my mount, so I decided to go back to M38,M36 and M37 in Auriga. I hadn't seen them since last spring, but found them quickly with a pair of 8x30 binoculars. Looked at them in the scope. So many stars. I must look at them in my 200p!

Scanning around for a new target I consulted my sky map and identified M33. I took a good look at the map , pointed my rdf between triangulum and beta Andromedae peeked throught the scope and there was my objective slap bang in the field of view. Who needs goto! Another smudge but more visible than M101.

The next target was M35, which I think is new for me. A scan with the binoculars in the right area found it and follow up with the telescope revealed another mass of stars in an more open pattern than M36. I also spotted what I now realize is NGC2158 a more dense cluster.

I now wanted to take a look at M52 which is located between Beta Cassiopoea and Cephus. I had seen M52 last week using my Vixen GP and 200p with GOTO, it's a really impressive cluster. I fould it it bit tricky to make out Cephus with so many stars in that area of sky. Anyway, I found it again quite quickly.

By now Orion was well above the horizon so I couldn't resist a peak at M42. Not the wonder you see in the astro photos, but remarkably similar to Messier's illustration of it

Orion Nebula - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tried viewing the nebula with my skywatcher UHC filter, but there wasn't any benefit viewing the nebula with the C80-ED.

By this time 11:30pm my feet had turned to blocks of ice so I called it a day and headed home. A good evening's observing even if it was slightly unnerving to be on your own in the middle of a forest.

[wulfrunian]

Very good read, you had a great night, those who didn't turn up were the losers! I'd love to find a nice dark site, though I'm not sure I'd enjoy being alone in a forest....