Killylane Reservoir, Co. Antrim 29th January.

Here are a couple of reports from us..(first part by Stevie Beasant, EAAS Secretary, the second part by myself)

(Stevie
The skies cleared over Belfast last night just after 9.00pm, giving a brilliantly clear sky, so Eamonn and I headed up to Killylane for a couple of hours. This was Killy' at its best, the Milky Way could be seen clearly running through Cassiopeia and Perseus, Orion was superb and M44 could be see as a very faint hazy patch with the naked eye.
Although Eamonn and I have been planning for months to do a Caldwell marathon, we decided it was too late to start one, and Eamonn really just wanted to get a chance to view some old friends with the 16" lightbridge. I had the 12" lightbridge with me, but I had forgotten to bring my 2" eyepiece, so I had to use mainly the 40mm and 20mm 1.25mm eps. We decided just to pick objects out at random and share the views.
We viewed the following objects in roughly this order, if I've forgotten any, Eamonn will fill in the gaps. In hindsight, we didn't view very many, but we did spend quite some time on each object.
Alnitak and Flame Nebula (16") I had some difficulty seeing the nebula, but a nebula filter was a big help.
M41 (12") Almost filled the field of view in the 20mm ep, used the 40mm for perspective. Two bright stars near the centre were particularly prominent.
M65 and M66 (12"). Good view of this Leo pair. Couldn't find M95 and M96 later though, I think I was looking in the wrong place.
M42, M43 (16") Awesome. The nebula filter really showed the true extent of the nebula, although it dimmed down the Trapezium.
M51 (12") Spiral arms clearly visible. Looked at it again later with the 16", view even better, with much fuller structure to NGC5195.
M3 (16") Absolutely wonderful, almost indescribable really. 3d effect made you feel you could look right into the heart of this great globular. Probably the highlight of the night, although we only spent a couple of minutes on this one.
Rosette Nebula and NGC2244 (12" and 16") This was a right carry-on. I started off the hunt for this, but could not find the nebula. I must have passed over the cluster at its centre at least four times, and I also kept getting distracted by other clusters and asterisms in the area, Monoceros really is a fantastic constellation for sweeping around. Eventually Eamonn joined the hunt, and he ended up at the same cluster. In the 16" though, there were faint wisps visible. Yet again the nebula filter came to the rescue, and the cluster itself started to take shape. It was one of those objects which need a bit of time to become visible. When I looked again in the 12", the nebula itself was more like a dark nebula, blocking out the view of background stars. Ironically, the whole thing was quite obvious in binos. Strange object.
We also had a quick look at a few other objects by ourselves, I had a look at the constellation Lepus, down below Orion, which is invisible from Belfast (M79 was too low to be seen), and I know Eamonn had a look at the Owl Nebula, before deciding to pack up at around 1.30am. The road out of Killy' was like an ice-rink by now, 1st gear all the way out to the main road.

(Eamonn)
As Stevie says, it wasn't a bad night.
I was thrown by a few scope problems at first, but then as mentioned above I got the Flame Nebula, and then went scouting, just trying to get the feel of the 16" and the greatly reduced field of view...my minimum magnification is 68!
So, whilst Stevie busied himself planning his observing I faffed around trying to get accurate using the Telrad...much harder than the 12", which I could place in seconds normally.
I had a good look at M97, The Owl Nebula ( or the oul nebula, as we call it in true norn iron style) and the eye holes were pretty obvious with averted vision.
I chased a couple of spiral galaxies, M108 and M109 in Ursa Major, before going to M3...one of my favourite sights, which had risen, and then I'd a scan through the beautiful cluster Melotte 111 in Coma Berenices, but binoculars show it best, just like the Pleiades.
Saturn was OK...not a patch on last year, and I could make out three moons.
Our saga with the Rosette is outlined above, but M42 took the award for Best View Of The Night. With the 16" it more than filled the entire field of view, with the strange folds of gas very obvious.
It was cold though

Sounds like a good night boys and you've demonstrated the the value of nebula filters in making the invisible visible.

Now that's a productive night's observing well done lads and thanks for sharing.

Sounds like a grand night Lads,
Why was the telrad harder to use on the 16" compared to the 12".

Absolutely, Dave!
With the increased magnification and reduced FOV it's much more difficult to get my bearings and find things with the 16". It needs much more precise placing and awareness of the general area I'm looking at.

Sounds like a great night.
Ye certainly made good use of your time.
Thanks for making the effort to report and
ye have certainly inspired me to think ahead
before observing sessions.