Friday Night Session at Cosmos

We were lucky to have very clear skies, for the most part, on Friday night at Cosmos. Some of us had scopes and binos to use, including the clubs 12 inch, which I have fostered as a child for a while!

From a personal observing session point of view, it was great to again have the time to use the Revelation 12" Dob. We observed 3 of the comet W-S 3 fragments, one so large it was unmistakable, with tail.

Browsing through the Coma Berenices region for the Coma/Leo/Virgo clusters, there were galaxies galore - I won't bore you with a list of objects here! - but the best of which I saw were the Black Eye galaxy (M64) and the lovely edge on spiral NGC 4565. Neil Bone knew this region of space pretty well!

Also got the 'Leo Triplet', M65 & 66 & NGC 3628 (as well as M's 95, 96, & 105). The Whirlpool was quite noticeable, even if it was in a hazy part of the sky. The only galaxy in Ursa Major actually that I still have not found with the 12" yet is M101. The Perseus Double Cluster seemed to be the first target for everyone, by coincidece!

And what can we say about Saturn! I mean... WOW! Jupiter was hard to see properly, as it was low down through some trees, but I did spot 1 Galilean moon with it.

Other instruments there included an ETX-70, Apogee 100 X 20's, 10 inch Newtonian reflector, and a C11 SCT (XLT??). It was nice to compare views with all these scopes on the various objects, particularly W-S 3, which the binos picked up easily.

Lyrid activity was pretty much not there unfortunately, despite being so close to maximum. Only a handful were seen. I managed to get the Ring Nebula (M57) for a time, as Lyra was quite low down and in some haze.

And don't get me started on the amount of satellites up there! I guess its that time of year again...



Seanie.