Clearest sky in weeks tonight

Well, in the last 2 hours I've been out, having seen one of the clearest skies in memory. It was so clear, M31 a distinct fuzz to the naked eye, Mars and Saturn shining brightly, and so many stars just everywhere that are usually not seen without the aid of binoculars.

Spent a while looking at Saturn and its rings, only had 50x magnification (20mm eyepiece) tonight, but still looked amazing. At the time of observing, I just saw one moon due to a very slight haze in that region. Later this week will be using up to 333 magnification (although seeing will really allow for 250x which I can get with a 1.5x barlow), looking forward to that.

Turned to M42, and wow, it looked larger at 50x than I've ever seen it before. It filled the majority of the FOV, so much detail visible, the trapezium distinct even at this magnification.

Decided to look at Mars, at 50x no real detail can be seen, tonight it appeared as a pinkish white disk with 2 tones to it.

On trying to center on Mars with my unaligned finder scope, I saw a faint smudge to the bottom left. Looking at this through the eyepiece at 50x revealed the most amazing cluster of stars I saw tonight. This was evidently M35, which in the past hasn't been so spectacular for me, but tonight I couldn't even begin to estimate how many stars there were, it was a bright glow of them immersed amongst a white field of shining stars so numerous they probably haven't been named yet. Great sight. Recommended for beginners on a dark clear night with good apertures, although still a worthy binocular target.

M31 appeared as usual not the most striking of telescope targets, many people believe they will see something similar to the long exposure photos, but even on a night like this, it was simply the naked eye fuzz made brighter and larger.

Unfortunately didn't get much time to look at more, got drawn into a few clusters, Saturn again, and a few personal faves such as M46 with it's little eyeball thing in the middle, before clouds started to appear out of nowhere. Needless to say, tonight has given me faith in the Irish weather:D Now nobody buy a new telescope, lets keep it this way.

<edit> And now it looks like the clouds have passed by, time to head out!

Hi

I'm up in your neck of the woods too and last night was amazing, never seen so many stars and a sky so clear. I looked at M42 too and it was the best I've seen it.

Mars at 130x showed some bluish detail on a pinky white disc and Saturn once again was amazing with Titan clearly visible.

Lets hope for many more nights like that

cheers

Wow, you guys got lucky, it wasn't so clear in the Midlands at all last night (and the rain beating down early this morning? Wow...)

TOTAL cloud cover last night ALL night here and more of the same predicted pretty much for the next few nights.

Lucky dogs.

Louth was somewhere in between -- high thin clouds didn't block out all the stars, but did reduce my normally NELM 5.5 - 6 skies to NELM 4.5 (which is about the same as with a full moon out).

-- Jeff.

It was cloud here, atleast you made the most of it.