Holiday Observation

[lunator]

Just got back from a weeks holiday on the Isle of Wight.

Now my 2 children are not so small I have room in the car for my ETX70.

Whilst I did not get as much observing done as I would have liked. I did get out for a couple of hours on Thursday day night.

Conditions were not ideal as there was some high cloud and the wind was a cool North Westerly.

We were staying in shanklin which is fairly light polluted but I had bought an OS Land Ranger Map and I knew that St Boniface down should be a good observing site.

I had to leave my 10x50 Binos with the Missus as she was watching the the shipping in the channel.

I had planned the route to the site. St Boniface Down is the highest point on th IOW and I set the scope up near the summit. I was about 750ft above sea level which is about 10 times higher than my garden in London.

1st thing to note. The site is not as dark as you would expect. The light pollution from Portsmouth & the South Coast is that bad it did affect the views :shock:, but the site was still Mag 6

I set the scope up and did an alignment. With the high cloud I decided that faint fuzzies would be difficult in a 70mm refractor so I started with Alberio. I had the 25mm eyepiece that came with the scope which being polite to meade is a very 'average' eyepiece but when I looked at the 1+ degree FOV I was astounded at the number of stars I could see. There were hundreds. I could not take my eyes away from the view it was truely fantastic.

I had a wonder through the Milky WAY looking at gamma delpinius, M57, M27.

My had become fully dark adapted and I looked up and could clearly see the Milky Way including the dark rifts. I spent the best part of an hour just working up through Aquila , Cygnus & Cassiopea using just my eyes. I have never seen the MW from my site and I doubt I ever will.

After a couple of hours I had to head back as I had a busy day on the beac planned with the children. But It was great to see the stars from a dark site.

Cheers

Ian

[geppetto]

Sounds like a great experience viewing some decent skies Ian 8)