The Dublin Stargazers Meetup at the Sugarloaf 12/5/2012

Yes, a couple of us will be there.

Mike

Hi all

Three of us ventured up, myself, Mike and Sean (RandomPillars), the first time I've met Sean and a really decent guy.

It was dark around 11 and Venus was the first target, it presented a beautiful crescent in my recently acquired WO 110, Megrez, I was expecting a lot of false colour, the scope being an ED rather than a true Apo, and Venus being notorious, the planet had a slight yellow hue, but nothing distracting, a good start. Saturn and Jupiter also presented well, a couple of Saturn's moon clearly visible.

Mike turned his 8" Newt to Izar and managed to split this stunning double, we both agreed that the primary was orange with the secondary had a green tint.

Sean brought his 12" Lightbridge and we had some fun observing objects such as M51, M97, Saturn, M27 and generally sweeping through the Milky Way, with that much aperture any part of the Milky Way was a joy.

With Mike's GoTo we pulled in NGC 4565 and M104, fine examples of edge on galaxies with character.

For myself I was just hopping about the place, seeing what the refractor could do and having a good time.

As the clock ticked past midnight Scorpius was rising above the horizon, the seeing was not perfect, it was close though, and M4 was a lovely hazy patch close to Antares, I didn't manage to see M80. I did a general sweep of Sagittarius, just stopping at anything that looked interesting, the number of clusters is truly impressive.

Past 1am the view of the Milky Way, as it stretched from Cygnus down through Aquila and into Sagittarius and Scorpius, was magnificent, the myriad of stars was overwhelming, the Cygnus Rift was prominent and there was a huge clump of the Milky Way in Sagittarius that was so obvious to the naked eye, it is the best I've seen the Milky Way for some time.

We packed up around 2.20am.

There was no plan as such, well, Mike had a plan, his computer had other plans. :whistle: It was a night for hopping around the sky and just enjoying the night and the company.

Paul

Well done Lads great report Paul. Glad you got clear skies up there.

Carl.

Would have loved to have been up there with you guys even if I was just sneaking looks through your scopes. (Mine really needs me to finish my mods to be usable...One of these years ) Unfortunately I was on the late shift with no way to swap with anyone.

Fingers crossed I'll be back in the game and with a usable scope come the start of the Autmn observing season. Might see some of ye for the Venus Transit before then though. Which reminds me. I still have to order some Baader Solar film from TS for my 80mm Finderscope

Great report Paul.

Was really great getting out there last night. First organised (kind of) event I attended. As a newbie, Paul and Mike were great at sifting, nay wading, through my endlessly long list of questions. Thanks lads. Really looking forward to doing it again soon.

By the way, I would have posted sooner only my fingers have just returned to an acceptable temperature.

Sean

Fantastic report, Paul. Brilliant you saw Scorpius too. I must ask Mike what magnification did he use to split the double star Izar in his 8" scope? On Friday night last I needed 140X to separate them.

Aubrey.