observing around Tullamore

Well thanks to all who came out last night for an observing session at our observing site outside Tullamore.
there was about nine of us (hard to count in the dark:laugh: )
good to see some regulars and some new faces as well.
Jupiter was of course the most popular object but we also looked at old favorites such as M57 and M13, although our view of our recent cometary visitor was poor - barely seen it myself with averted vision:unsure:
the 16" Dob was joined by an array of smaller scopes as well as two of our members doing some jiggery-pokery with and radio ariel, listening for something or other:unsure: A good night well attended thanks to Seanie Morris....one of our leading club Brainiac's:)

got to more observing soon

Declan

Thanks for posting Declan, I was in the middle of typing my own report in another tab when I refreshed and spotted this!

It was great to get out into the field again. We were all bemused at just how warm it was last night - Declan was going around in his shirt all night!

That 16" Dob was great. No such thing as 'averted vision' with that instrument. Jupiter, M13, The Double Cluster, M57 and of course Comet 103P/Hartley were all easy targets and looked amazing. We had 6 telescopes, binoculars and an RTE 2 aerial all pointed at the sky. While doing a 2-star allignment with David Daly's ETX-70 I caught a faint satellite whizz past at Altair - I tracked it for about 10 degrees thinking it might either fade or brighten but it did neither.

We also saw a couple of bright meteors including a duo separated by less than 2 seconds enter off the end of Ursa Minor and head for Aquila.

We all had a great time, spent around 4 hours at the site before going our separate ways. Fair play to Declan for driving all the way up from Ballylinan with the 16" Dob - I reckon it was worth it!

Seanie.

Btw, if there is anyone reading this from the midlands that has not been to one of our monthly meetings but would still like to meet up for an observing session, please drop the club an email to tullamoreastronomy'at'yahoo'dot'co'dot'uk and we will keep you posted. I think we are serious about keeping up the 1st Friday of the month for observing sessions when we can and obviously add more spontaneously as the weather beckons.

'at' = @
'dot'=.


Seanie.