Saturday Night Observing Session

We'll have to have a barbie. :laugh:

I think Saturday night will be more an occasion to track down globulars and doubles rather than wispy nebulae. There has been some dew the last couple of mornings and the sky transparency hasn't been great. Lots of scatter of the Dublin sky glow on Wednesday and Thursday night whereas earlier in the week the sky was that bit clearer. The milkiness of the day-time sky today is also quite obvious. Still, we should have a clear sky on Saturday night and there's plenty of choice deep-sky objects to track down.

See you in Trooperstown!

John

I'd love to join you in Trooperstown guys, but am in West Cork. Really dark skies here, but the telescope is in Dublin, so using naked eye and binos instead.

Hope you have a great session.

Mike

Great that you've the clear skies in W. Cork too Mike. Have a look for M6 & M7 in Scopius which are really low down from here but you should catch them at your site.


Notes for Saturday:

I was in Trooperstown on Friday evening. Trees block the low-down stuff so we may have to move around to catch M8, etc.

Important - there was road resurfacing in progress on the road from Ashford to Annamoe. I had to detour to Roundwood and then worked back to Annamoe before going on to Trooperstown. Best bet then might be turn off at Kilmacanogue then on to Roundwood, etc in case the roadworks are still in place Saturday. They might be forever as the loose chippings are still on a stretch of road at Kilmullin - I drove that same road surface 3 years ago!

Went on to the Shay Elliott memorial on the Glenmalure road. Lots of parking there and a good southern aspect. Carried on to Drumgoff and Aughavannagh ... nowhere with a good horizon. Headed on to Rathdrum after that and then back towards Dublin via Moneystown. A few pull-in areas but no decent sites for a group with scopes. Turned off a km before Kilmacanogue to recheck the car parks on the old Roundwood road - all bar the 1st one are inaccessible ( even that has only room for 2 or 3 cars outside the barrier but it is more sheltered than the Sugar Loaf car park).

Satellites @ Trooperstown: ATV-4 flyover at 22:55BST on Sat night and 3 ISS passes with the first at 23:30BST approx. There's a mag -5.3 Iridium flare at 23:34 BST and a few other space-birds > mag 2 going over during the night.

Sky transparency might be better than I first thought.

See you all later,

John

Hi John,
The weather is definitely raising the spirits of many here, the sky is as good as it gets here in Limerick tonight, we watched the ISS pass over twice tonight so far and the ATV aswell,
We tracked both with the 12" scope, ISS was full of detail, the ATV was not pinpoint and had a definite shape and boy was it going alot faster then the ISS,
So both are definitely worth keeping an eye out for on Saturday night when you go out.

Looking forward to the observing tonight Dave. The sight of the ISS through the scope sounds amazing! I'd love to see the station showing detail ... maybe tonight with the big 25x binos? They actually only arrived yesterday so get first light this evening!

Great pics too of the NLCs that you have posted in the other thread,

J.