A very good night.

[merlinxlm]

Hello everybody, it’s been a very long time since I've been able to do some observing, I think it’s been about a month and a half. Anyway, the wife took our little jack Russell, Nel out last night and she told me it was crystal clear, so I put on my jacket, got my binoculars and went outside. I’ve made a shield to block out my next door’s security light, so I put that up. And god what a difference it’s made, I could clearly see the M31 and the Milky Way looked like a very thick cloud running across the sky, it was beautiful. Anyway back to the sights that I saw. The double cluster in Perseus looked brilliant, full of interest. The M13 and M31 looked brilliant. Also I managed to catch the M81 and M82 after a lot of time finding them. I saw my best open cluster, the Coat hanger; I've always liked this cluster. I saw three satellites, about 11 meteors, of which two were really bright, they both left a very bright trail across the sky, and then disintegrated into very bright fire balls. I stayed out until 01:20, about 2 hours worth of observing, and I must say that I really did enjoy myself. I still enjoy using my SkyWatcher 15X70 binoculars the amount of objects that I’m able to observe still surprises me.

Thank you all.

[Talitha]

Well done, glad you were finally able to get some observing done. It's nice to see another Coathanger fan, too. The first time i ever saw it was by accident using 11x70s and it made quite an impression.

[Starblazer]

Glad someone got to do some viewing Was very clear for a bit and apart from 5mins on Jupiter, I spent most my time attempting to connect and configure the Rajiva modded EQ6 I have...although the sky's were clear, I spent most of it looking at polaris and trying to work out if the damn thing was slewing to targets.

Giving up on that lol, need faster slew rate for sure so EQ6 syscan pro upgrade due.

In the mean time the clouds had creeped in and my chances of seeing anything gone for the nite. Tiredness creeping in also, so one last smoke before i hit the wooden hill.

[Doug]

Hi Merlin

your the lucky one tonight here in Essex nothing but Cloudy Skies

roll on September skies can be really clear ,My scope is a LX90

but for a quick look I use 15x80 binos

Happy hunting

Doug

Essex

[Doc]

What a night and what a lovely report. The coathanger is special, very pretty and easy to find.