A great nights observing

Hi Folks

Managed to get to a dark site tonight and got in some really good observing. Inspired by sue french's talk at whirlpool i spent a decent bit of time on some of the brighter objects and it really paid off.

I had my best view of the double cluster, Lots of different asterisms and chains of stars kept grabbing my attention. It makes a huge difference to actually spend some time on these objects as opposed to lashing through a list. close by I also observed trumpler 2 and NGC 957, another pair of small open clusters. The dumbell was astounding in a 6mm widefield eyepiece through the 8" dob. I kept both eyes open put my hand over one and used a shroud to block out all stray light from the eyepiece. It had an etheral and almost 3d quality to it, it looked like you could almost touch it.

Following on from this success I spent some time on M31 and two dust lanes were easily visible and extent of M31 was amazing.

I also stumbled across NGC 6940 in cygnus, which is a large open cluster,packed with faint stars which extends over half a degree I'd say, easily visible in the 10X50'but transformed in the scope.

I also tracked down a few galaxies in and around pegasus.
NGC 891, was first on the list. I thought it would be brighter and larger but it was tough enough in the 8", It was definitely elongated, but that was it, no hint of dust lane, a much larger scope needed I reckon to spot this.

NGC 7814 another galaxy in pegasus close to gamma was an easy find and showed distinct elongation and a core that seemed to have two nuclei.The core also seemed to swell in different directions with averted vision.

NGC 7331 was pointed out to me in Whirlpool and I paid it another visit. Another elongated galaxy easily visible in the 8". I finished off with a quick look at ngc 7479 in pegasus, but I am afraid I couldn't spot any detail.

I also had a quick look at a few globulars, M2, M92 and M13 and the eastern portion veil nebula which was spectacular (I missed the opportunity at whirlpool to look at this through one of the big scopes). It tracks neatly around the curve of my field of view with a widefiled 20mm.

Comet Loneos was an easy find early in the evening but was reluctant to show any detail. The haze got worse and transformed into cloud so I called it a night.

Lot's of great targets there!

Now that's what i call Astronomy.Thank's for that Trevor you just gave me some ideas for possible exposure candidates.

Nice report Trevor, didn't get boring to read at all! You had quite a night. You mention your Dob a lot. Did you not use anything else?

Nice report Trevor, didn't get boring to read at all! You had quite a night. You mention your Dob a lot. Did you not use anything else?

Hi Seanie, i just used the 8" dob and had a pair of 10X50's around the neck

Nice one Trevor. Had a very similar experience last night. Now if only we could have such pristine skies every night! I bet everyone on the boards were out - come on guys tell us about it