Well, a great night was had at Donnington last night, about 3/4 hr west of Townsville!! What a relief, as we were so worried about the ever lingering cloud up here of late, but we were finally in luck. Seeing was not great, and bit of light in the NE from industrail site (too light for Ursa Major galaxies, which we can see sometimes), and in the SE from a fire.
We had occasional cloud come through, but much of the night was at least 80% clear. Many quick short meteors were seen.
For starters, while a bit of cloud cleared, and the sky darkened, we checked out the 3 planets in the east, with a very bright Venus close to Regulus, and Mars and Saturn above. Thought Mercury may have been there too, but cloud may have obscured it.
We did a bit of a Messier Tour, but got bogged down at the start with Virgo and Coma Berenices. Too many galaxies, and did we have the one that was asked for??? Who knows, as we all had dobs, so no GoTo clarification. It took us half the night to work out the 3 main stars of Coma Berenices!!!
Some of the objects viewed were:
Beautiful albireo - always a delight (and easy to find), its blue and yellow components clear and bright.
NGC 6302 ... The Bug Nebula in Scorpious - a little bipolar PN, and interesting in the FOV, with 2 small faint sections either side of the main star.
Hydra - M83 ... large spiral, 'Southern Pinwheel' - was quite faint to us all. M48 - nice glob.
Virgo - we only stuck to 2, as too many gals crowded in, and we werent sure which was which!! We checked out 2 galaxies, M49 and M 104 - at least we could recognize The Sombrero.
Coma Berenices - what a faint constellation - and, after a LONG time deciphering its actual whereabouts, we decided just to do the 1 galaxy, M 64 -'Black Eye Galaxy'.
Decided to do some easy ones then, so checked out the beautiful Ring Nebula (M57), and M56 in Lyra, a lovely little glob.
On to Corvus for NGC 4361 (a PN)and the little Antenna galaxies NGC 4038-39.
Aquarius had now risen so searched for the big Helix nebula- very faint, and took me ages!! Once found, a bit of a wow, as so huge, but still, very faint. Think we also checked out The Saturn Nebula in Aquarius, which didnt look like Saturn.
Up to Capricorn for M30 - nice glob, and NGC 7009, a little nebula.
Over to southern sky due to cloud and checked out the 2 globs in Musca, lovely ESB 365, the Jewel Box, then the magestic Omega Centauri,then to the lovely 47 Tuc, and Sue found a nice bit of nebula like formation, which must have been 362, a little glob, near 47 Tuc.
Am sure we saw more, as time just flew, as we whizzed from 1 target to another. We were waiting for Jupiter and Sculptor to rise, but cloud was dominating in SE. We did manage to have a quick look at Jupiter and 4 moons, no luck with Uranus, as too many clouds.
Quick look at the lovely M13 in Hercules before we left - Sue and Lex hadnt seen this before, and were quite impressed. We tried for the Veil nebula, but incoming cloud, might make it one for next week, with the help of a nice little filter.
Will probably do it again next Saturday night.