Eta - Aquarid Meteor Watch

We had great clear skies here last night over Maghera so Conor and i went ahead with our annual Eta- Aquarid meteor watch. We bought some food supplies, grabbed our cameras, tripods, chairs , 10X50 Binos and walked for a mile outside Maghera to one of our regular observing sites on a high level field near a small forest. We watched from 22.55 - 03.45 BST and the sky was in good shape with a 1st 1/4 moon low in the west, semi - dark skies, trans = 7-8 the milkyway was faintly visible with dark structure.

Altogether we observed 15 meteors, a mix of sporadics and a few late Lyrids the brightest of which was mag 1 however we seen no Eta - Aquarids at all. We had our cameras set up taking exposures in the hope of capturing a meteor, one did shoot through my patrol area heading straight for Vega however at mag 4 it was too faint to register on my camera. Several bright satellites visited us and one bright golden Irdium flare.

Conor and i both spent considerable time observing comets 73P SW3 fragments C and B both placed high in the sky within Hercules racing at a fast pace towards the western fringes of the 'summer triangle'. C was a bright object in our 10X50 binos with an aqua - green modertately condensed coma and a slender dust tail extending for 2 full moon diameters running parallel with the horizon. B shared the same binocular field as globular cluster M92 , this comet was also a green colour but i did find the coma to be larger, fainter and more diffuse tonight. I could not make a positive ID with the naked eye however i could easily see fragment C as a bright slim streak without much difficulty, seen a bright 'bino' meteor shoot through the FOV narrowly missing the comet. We took a number of images of the fragments, in my case i could just about pick up C as a green ball using a 15 sec exp at ISO800....

The comets were 'first light' for my new Bresser 10X50 binos which i had just bought this evening before sunset.

At the beginning of the session we observed a beautiful multi coloured corona around the moon followed shortly after by a partial 22* moon halo. We were amazed just how soon the twilight arrived which was evident even at 3am with its intensity rising very quickly. We headed back to my home and set up Johns 8.5" reflector for a closer look at the comet fragments but the sky became overcast very rapidly. We sat and chatted with a well deserved cup of tea and called it a night when the dawn was almost upon us. Not many meteors seen but it was still a good night!

Clear skies