Magnificant Jupiter

Great stuff guys

Jonathan, Simon, John McConnell and I were at Bragan in Co. Monaghan on Friday night. This was John's annual night out, and he loved it.

The skies were superb, no wind, low humidity, M41 naked eye, perfect viewing conditions

Of course, being that time of year, we were hunting galaxies, with the odd planetary nebula and globular cluster thrown in. So I had the 10" Orion dob with me, while Simon had his 10" reflector on an EQ6 and Jonathan had his 8" Meade LX200

I think John (who has forgotten more about astronomy than the other three of us combined will ever know) saw more galaxies in one night than he has seen in the last ten years. I just worked my way from NGC2903 in Leo all the way across to M51 over a period of about four hours. Some were better than others, with M99, NGC4565 (the Needle galaxy), M101 and M51 itself being particularly outstanding. We also followed Markarian's chain along it's length, and saw 7 galaxies in the M95,96,105 group. John was totally entranced by the Needle and gazed at it for about ten minutes.

Simon got a superb view of NGC3242 (the Ghost of Jupiter Nebula) in Hydra in his 10" Orion, while Jonathan got an outstanding M53. We finished off with a quick look at M104, which was surprisingly good even though still quite low.

But the most memorable view of the night was early on, just seeing the whole of Canis Major, which is a difficult constellation to see in its entirety from around Belfast.

Although one always lives in hope, I fear the best night of the year is already behind us....until Kerry anyway.

stevie wrote: I fear the best night of the year is already behind us....until Kerry anyway.

I was thinking the exact same thing. Dry, no wind, no dew, no jet-stream. Hopefully we will see more of these nights.

I was out imaging Jupiter 13th but seeing got really bad and I had to drop the Barlow just to get focus - eventually stopped imaging altogether and definitely still had the jetstream over me........ but watched the great show through the eyepiece. Had a go at a few deep targets as well but too many street lights out the front where I need to be for Jupiter.

Nice image Kevin. Funny how seeing varies so quickly. For me (north Co,Cork) the seeing early was not great but then around midnight it became very steady. Jupiter was rock solid in the eyepiece. Then about 1am it started wobbling again.