Three observing sessions in under a week – it’s been a while since I had one of those.The wind was a little too high to safely open up the DBO, so I dragged the Baby RC out for some star hopping. I’m so glad I don’t have a Cassegrain design any more, as within 15mins, dew was dripping off the scope. A corrector plate would have dewed up almost immediately! Dealing with dew requires yet…
Observing Session: 6, September
Wow. two clear nights in a row. Transparency not too hot with the murk climbing up to about 20 degrees from the horizon. Still had trouble seeing C17, but at least a small proportion of C18 revealed itself. Session Stats Date: 06/09/2015 Time: 20:49 – 22:49 UTSeeing: II Mostly Stable,Transparency: III Mostly Clear, Temp:10.0c, Pressure: 1025mb, Humidity: 84%, Dew Point: 7.4 , Wind: 2mph, SQM: 18.5 mags/arcsecond, NELM: 5.3mag NCG891, C23 Not Seen. I checked carefully that I had identified the star field. NCG1036, M34…
Non Observing Session: 5, September
Well this little session proved to be a bit of a damp squib. Scope Nights said there would be 50% plus cloud all evening, so we invited some friends round for dinner. A very nice evening from that point of view, where the ‘Vin Rouge’ flowed in reasonable moderation. As they were departing at about 11:00, it was pointed out that the sky was as clear as a bell and the Milky way was…
The Dog's Cahunas
With the complete domination of highly accurate and very detailed digital Star Atlases around, you would have thought that a) there would be no need for hard copy printed versions any more, and b) Not another NEW hard copy atlas. Well that’s what I thought until I saw Interstellarium’s new Desktop Edition Atlas. Upon opening it, you realise that it very closely duplicates the information in Willman Bell’s Uranometria 2000.0 atlas. Both have a similar…
Observing Session: 27, August
The weather has been trying to give me clear skies during the period of darkness for weeks, but not until last night, has it actually succeded. Unfortunately, it coincided with a 98% illuminated Moon, which completely drowned out hope of seeing any galaxies or faint nebulae. Looking at my progress through the Caldwell catalogue, I seem to have done all the low lying fruit, so the majority of objects still to observe are guess…
Finished at last: Observing Session 6, August
Well my prediction of the astronomical observers version of plague and pestilance made on my previous post, has been born out. The weather this Summer has been dire! While the days have been quite nice, as soon as it gets dark, the cloud cover descends. I cannot remember a worse late Spring and early Summer period since I got into this astronomy malarky. The good news is that last Thursday night, I finally completed…