It looked like a good night coming up so I rolled out the 16" at 17:00 to give it time to cool down, no need for a fan as the temp was only 15degs C.
At 17:46 an iridium satellite started the nights observing of with a 8mag flair quite spectacular as a mag 4 satellite had gone through the same field only three minutes before.
After tea the first cab of the rank was MYCN18, using various eyepieces from 5mm to 13mm and 2x barlowa lot of time was spent on this Planetary Nebula,
I was unable to see the rings but got an impression of an out of shape star, even with an O111 filter there was no hint of the ring extension's, it only made the planetary brighter.
I will hope to observe this object in a larger scope (25"and 30") some time in the future.
Longmore 5 was observed using the 13mm nagler and the 5mm X-Cel, faint ring was observed with averted vision but disappeared when looked at straight on, it improved a bit with the O111 on the nagler but not with the 5mm XCel.
At 19:56 whilst looking at Longmore 5 I caught sight out of the corner of my eye a bright greenish /white Meteor about mag 8-9 heading N/NE through URSA MAJOR, it lit up the northern horizon, two 8th Mag objects in one night
.
M51 (NGC4194-5495) was very bright with the 13mag star plainly seen and the "bridge" between the two galaxies hinted at, I think if I had a larger scope the spiral arms would have been plainly seen.
Shapley 1 was next to be observed with a nice donut shape, thicker on the west side, the 13.5 mag central star was plainly seen as were two other faint foreground stars either side of the torus.
As one of my encoders decided to go on the blink and it was by this time 22:30 and 3.5degs C I called it a night
