Hi Everyone,
With our recent spell of great weather and clear skies I'm really trying to make the most of it from an observing standpoint. For example, I was out with my scope again last night, albeit to revisit some previously viewed objects.
The session started with viewing the 22:48 ISS flyover. Following that I observed Albireo, which displayed its beautiful orange, and blue stars at 39X. While in Cygnus I revisited the asterism I had previously mentioned in an earlier post. The first one is an arc-shaped asterism that I believe includes the following stars: HIP101808; TYC 3161-177-1; TYC 3161-431-1; TYC 3161-95-1, and TYC 3161-649-1. I'm still trying to work out the other one!
From Cygnus, I went to Vulpecula to see whether I could find the Dumbbell Nebula again. Some of you might remember that Paul kindly showed me how to find it at last Friday's meet-up. The good news is that I was able to find it no problem; the bad news is that it looked nothing like it did from the Sugarloaf. The 'Dumbbell' looked more like Messier's description of a 'faint fuzzy' than any type of weightlifting piece of equipment at 39X. I did push the magnification, but it failed to make any discernable difference. Having found M27, I decided that I would try to find M71 a go. Unfortunately, I could not locate it. And to my shame I spent almost 30 minutes looking for it!
As it had just past midnight, I decided to wait for the second flyover of the ISS. This time it was approximately 15° lower in the sky, but it's magnitude was pretty much unchanged at -3.6. What made this flyover that bit more special was that two of my sisters, one of my brother-in-laws, and I were all on the phone describing what we were seeing. In fact, my brother-in law managed to get a great video of it as it flew over the Moon. I really never get tired of seeing it. With that in mind, I'm going to grab a bite to eat and watch it fly over at 23:37.
That's my lot for now.
Clear skies to all,
Darren.
