Last Nights Observing!

Conor and i had a good observing session last night which ended at 04.30 due to clouds. This was mostly an aurora watch however we picked up nothing suspicious visually or with the cameras so perhaps the predicted activity will arrive on the 2nd instead. We observed 19 meteors, a mix of Geminids, Ursids, Quadrantids and sporadics that brightest of which was of mag - 3.0. We passed the time taking expsoures of the sky then decided to take out the scopes. We set up the..

10" Dobsonian
8" F/6.3 S.Cass
4.5" Tal 1 (which Conor used for webcam imaging)

Using these instruments we observed Saturn, M44, M76, M34, Double Cluster, M52, M13, M31, M32, M35, Mirach M42, M43 and i finnished up with a careful comet search through the eastern sky. The sky was in pretty good shape with the milkyway, M31 and M33 visible to the unaided eye. A nice enjoyable if somewhat quiet session!







Clear skies!

Yea we had a great night last night. I called martin at 10:40pm to see if i could get the 10inch and observed m42, m32, m31, m44 and also done some sneaky searching. I also observed Mars and Saturn. I used the 10inch for about an hour then went and got my Tal 1 with laptop and webcam. I tried to image Saturn but as my webcam is only a single frame taker nothing showed up. I observed Saturn through my scope with Barlow X2 and high power. Saturn was looking amazing, i could split the cassini division no problem and could belts round the planets also 3 its moons. I still was very impressed with my Tal 1 as it views are so crisp and it's a great scope. After packing away the equitment i decided to do a meteor watch in the near football pitch. I stood and stood for about an hour and see nothing. Then about 12 i seen 3 meteors all within a minute and they were a nice orange with short tails. I was getting really cold by this time so i headed in for 15mins to get a cuppa. When i came back out about 20mins later Martin arrived over and we continued the meteor watch. I was looking in the East when i saw a bright boderline fireball glide across the heading south. The head was all flared up white and it had a lovely long tail about 45deg long. Before we know it, it was 4am so we went over to the scope and done some observing for another hour. As the time was geting lat we finished a long and great at 4:45am