Im Buzzing!!....

[magic77]

Watched Wonders of Universe which I enjoyed while leaving Scope out to cool down..Went outside for a couple of hours was very clear tonight...Managed to Find 8 new

Messiers...M35,M63,M65,M66,M94,M95,M96 and M105...Also found NGC 3628 to complete the Leo Triplet..Loved having 3 Galaxies in the eyepiece at once!!... Saturn looked pretty good too!...

[kris h]

Congrats on your new messiers sights

recorded wonders & went out for a bit withs my binos

clear skies

[JamesF]

I've just got in after a pleasing two and a half hours or so at the eyepiece and am also feeling rather chuffed with myself. I was actually feeling a bit tired when I started and couldn't face carting everything up into the field, so just took the ST102 out onto the patio instead.

Started the evening by splitting Sigma Orionis and Beta Monoceros and revisiting half a dozen Messier objects that I'd found with the ST80 but hadn't looked at with the 102 so far. I managed to pick out three stars in each of the multiples, which I reckon is as much as I can expect with the 102.

I've had several failures to find M95 etc., but was determined to do so this evening. Eventually I found M95 by star-hopping and from there found M96 and M105, plus another which I believe was probably NGC3384. I may even have had another in the ep at the same time as these last two, but I couldn't be sure.

I've also had a few failures with objects in Virgo/Coma Berenices, so looked up M88 in Stellarium, guessed the spot with my RDF, looked in the eyepiece and there was a galaxy! Of course the minor problem I was then faced with was working out which one it was I scanned around the first with my 32mm ep and found a couple more fuzzies, deciding from the orientation that they were probably M87 (the first) and M84 and M86. Based on that assumption I navigated to where I thought I should find a few more and eventually managed to find thirteen. Most gratifying of all was making it out to where I thought M98 should be and actually finding an object of the correct shape exactly where I believed it should be.

James