Mag7 skies in West Clare

Thanks dave........i was with steve roche{wellbuttie} using that starry night program its a great program really impressed me

While doing some looking up as to what stars these are , I found this amazing image of M51
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Messier51.jpg

Didn't realise that M51 was immersed in such a "sea" of galaxies.

Anyone spot one particular face-on spiral galaxy in the background?
Its the one peeking out cheekily between the two component galaxies of M51.

Sure just look at Deep field. Everywhere is a sea of galaxies, even a small seemingly insignificant square of sky.

I have to say that image of M51 is burned into my brain, we spent so long at it experimenting with different eyepieces to see what more we could make out.

Probably a stupid question but how would you measure the mag of the night sky??

Frank had a laptop with starry night.

yeah that was fun.
It lit up the place like an atomic bomb!

That image of the Whirlpool is still knocking around in my head
from the night in Doonbeg so I did a sketch of it. (Photoshop)
Now, this was totally from memory so forgive and inaccuracies
(eg if I got the spiral arms going the wrong way etc! )
I haven't looked at a pic of the Whirlpool since so it could be A-ways
but I didn't want a fresh 'picture' in my mind to distract me.

See what you think.
Dave, I'd be interested to see how this compares to your
mental picture of it.

I was slow to put in too much 'nebulosity' for the want of a better
word because I wasn't sure was it real or imagined.
But I think from memory there was in fact more.
(the background is probably a little too dark...
that may be it)

I cant remember what eyepiece it was
(Dave, it was the first one)
I do remember at one stage it filled and even went out
of the FOV of one of them but the detail was still stunning.


anyway...

here it is in all it's roughness...

Great report lads!! Sounds like a fun night was had.

Fab sketch Frank! You must give me a demonstration sometime of how you do that in PS.

Hey Frank,
I'm impressed, that star you have in the arms in the 6 o'clock position was the one I thought was a SN for a few seconds as it was no where near as visible in the 12", I remember a W shape of stars to the lower left arm.
I also distinctly remember dark lanes in some parts of the arms, especially the lower arms and the back ground was brighter as you said, despite using the shroud and an extra section beyond the top of the UTA.
The eyepiece that gave the best high power view was the 80degree 9mm eyepiece, it filled 1/3 the field of view.
I'm still looking for a deepsky map of this galaxy with magnitudes to compare it against.

BTW all you deepsky imagers out there, give M99 a go, its a galaxy you don't hear much about, its a stunning face on spiral with very prominent arms.