Observing session, Shannonside, 8th June

Cool.
I was shooting it over the last few nights...

To catch it and the shuttle would be great!

Is the session still on at Boher tonight (8pm)?

Yes John -- it is still on. Some guys are bringing sanwiches , so it could be a long one. Are you ok to find the site? Give me a call if in difficulty.

Just looking at the avatars there lads, is there something in the sky up to your right? :lol:

Good luck with the session if ye are not already gone. Just leaving for our observing session on the Shortt mountain, south of Tralee.

:lol: :lol: I see what you mean. I'll be changing my avatar soon anyway, I might have the scope pointing to the left this time :lol:

Anyways, thanks to all who came along last night, there was 8 club members in total, who all made it an eventful night.,

We got razor sharp views of Venus and Saturn as they set into the western horizon, we thought we got glimpses of Mercury but there was just too much murk in the horizon to be definite about it. Going up at the time we did was perfect, as it gave us time to setup and be ready after sunset and have a good chat aswell.

We got a good look at Jupiter when it got to the meridian, I was amazed at how clear it was. Through the 20 inch, the 4 moons appeared as tiny disks :shock: and there was a wealth of detail and festoons visible in the belts, the GRS was very clear. Amazingly, it was probabily the best views of Jupiter I have ever seen. A few others who saw it felt the same way.

We got about an hour or so of good reasonable darkness, between 1 and 2 am, we had a look at the summer DSOs like M57, the veil nebula and hunted down the usual globular clusters. As it got brighter we went double star hunting, the colours the big scope shows are so vivid and pinpoint sharp. Albireo was like 2 flash lights, it was so bright. The milkyway through Cygnus was so clear as was the Cygnus rift, for a split second I thought it was high altitude haze, it was that bright!.

The ISS did 2 very good passes over us, I had a go at manually tracking it with the 20" and a 14mm UWA Meade eyepiece and did get a good few seconds of it through the scope, wobbly as it was, there was a definite shape to it, comparable to the size of Jupiter. I was able to see 2 prongs, I suppose they were the solar panels, there was no sign of the shuttle Atlantis, I guess it was too early for it at that stage. I'm amazed that worked at all!!..

To top it all off, as the Sun was rising, we were treated to a faint noctilucent cloud display, it started off faint and small, then got bigger and then a little brighter. We also had a view of a low third quarter moon, its copper/rust colour was vivid!.

All in all, a great night, but now I'm feeling the effects of it, soon to be repeated hopefully !!
Once again, I forgot to bring my tea and sandwiches . :lol:

Once again, I forgot to bring my tea and sandwiches . :lol:

Won't do the waistline any harm - as well as luggin' the twenty incher around