SAC observing session, tonight 29th Nov

can feel the cold from here...

Goodness, those pictures look COLD!

-- Jeff.

oh man, what a night !!!
with the right clothes on, I was fairly warm and we were not too tired by the end of it and were only beaten by the sky getting bright as the Sun rose.
We had debated on going to the Burren but the satellite images were showing that there was a cloud bank skirting down the west coast during the night and from Boher we could see that there was a permanent cloud bank along the northwestern horizon the entire night, thankfully it was the right decision. We did get about 15mins worth of cloud at about 2.30am so we used that opportunity to fill up on tea and sandwiches.
We had great views of many many DSOs in Andromeda, Triangulum, Perseus, Cassiopeia, Taurus, Orion, Hydra, Puppis, Monoceres, Coma Berenecies, Hercules, Gemini, Cancer.
A number of highlights for me were the obvious Orion Nebula and the rest of the sword, horsehead nebula, California nebula and M46,

Orion nebula was simply stunning, the O3 filter showed more detail in the central core of the nebula, I saw stars in the center that I hadn't seen before, the core looked like frosted glass, the 2 arms of the nebula looked like exhaust from a car a few years back that would have been using lead petrol. There was red colour, faint but visible around the core and along one edge of the core. The fifth star of the trapezium was decidedly yellow orange. Without filters it was easy to mistake the background around the nebula as skyglow, the area all around the nebula is aglow with faint nebulosity!!! The star clusters along the sword were so bright and the nebulosity in ngc1977 was well defined. The fish mouth (M43) was picture perfect and I had to move the glare of M42 out of the field of view to see it properly.

The horsehead was completely invisible without the use of the h-beta filter. With the filter the horsehead shape was evident but the exact outline was not distinct and was very faint. This nebula was big and was best seen in the 31mm eyepiece. Ngc2025 next to zeta orionis was clearly visible as was its dark lane that intersects it.
The califronia nebula is also extremely large and was visible only with the h-beta filter. One end of it tapered of to a point while the other end faded away, the north side of it had a sharp edge while the south side blended away.
Hubbles variable Nebula in Monoceres was bright and showed its photographic shape with a star like point at its end. The Rosette nebula was faintly visible as was the cluster ngc2244, this nebula is several degrees across so I had to pan the scope along its varing perimeter.
I tried the cone nebula at the cluster ngc2264 but was unable to pin it down, however the cluster itself was fairly evident.
M46 in Puppis was a nice surprise, its a bright open cluster containing a very obvious planetary nebula with a central star, easily visible.
We also had a look at the PerseusA galaxy cluster, many little faint fuzzy galaxies in the same field of view.
Saturn was almost unrecognizable, I was just about able to decern which way the rings were tilting, there almost edge on appearance was impressive.
This is only a small sample of what we saw, there were many other faint clusters and nebulae seen, too many to go into here.

The dew heater on the secondary did a perfect job on keeping the secondary mirror dew free, at about 2 am, the primary started to dew over so I used a little heater pad to "warm" it up and in about 10mins the dew was gone, the thermals affected the views through the scope for about 15mins afterwards and was fine after that, that was acceptable as it allowed many more hours of observing.

The observing site had frozen solid by the time we were leaving, the frost on the scopes was more like fallen snow, I could have made a snowball from what was on the lid of the power tank. One of Franks pics shows me cleaning the ice off the scope before we packed up for the night.

We watched Orion rise when we started and watched it set before we went home, the tiredness only kicked in on the drive home, the roads were icy bit manageable.
Got up today out of bed at 3pm, totally shattered! I gave the obsessionators wood finish a good polishing today as it got frozen over good-o last night. I think I'll give tonight a miss with a view to getting the lunar occultation of Venus tomorrow, that should be nice!!

Yip, what a night indeed!
Dave pretty much covers the hit list,
highlights for me were seeing M42 like never before,
it can only be described as better than photographic - it was in colour and 3D!
The Horsehead was faint but defiantly there and a real treat to see
in the flesh.
Saturn was very strange looking and the side on ring system gives it
an unnatural almost mechanical look.

We observed several meteors during the session
some of which were very bright and left long glowing trails.
I saw them as greeenish trails.
Early on in the night we caught as many as 3 - 4 in quck succession
every 30 min or so.
The radiant was aprox in Taurus so maybe they were connected to
the Alpha Monocerotids? - It's hard to say.

I took lots of wide field tracked shots of Orion in the hope of catching
a few but luck wasn't with me.
They either appeared out of the FOV or after the shutter closed.

I tried out the new setup with the ETX OTA on the Astrotrac
and its rock solid.
Rough polar alignment gives about 1 min of accurate tracking
for photographs.
It's handy to have the flip mirror so you can observe an object and
then of you want to take a quick snap it's easily done.

The light pollution at the site seems to have gotten worse in the last
year but as always after 12 / 1am it gets better,
noticeably so last night.

The main roads home were ok but out in Shannon some of the local roads
were like glass!
I'm just back from observing the conjunction tonight and
they are frozen again with a harder frost coming down than last night.

Yay!

We're all a bunch of lightweights up this side of the country compared to you two. Packing up at 7 am !!!:laugh: I'm not saying I'd be able to manage Frank and Daves kind of marathon sessions but lets just say, its never me thats the first to say, "Right lads, I think I'll head" on any of the sessions I've been to. It gets to the point where its a case of, "I can either pack up with the last 2 or 3 lads or stay here on my own after they go"

Calibos wrote:

"Right lads, I think I'll head" on any of the sessions I've been to. It gets to the point where its a case of, "I can either pack up with the last 2 or 3 lads or stay here on my own after they go"

Yea, I'm not a fan of observing at a remote site on my own, you always feel like you're watching your back, even if you know there is no one for miles around.