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Observing report from the other side of the world.
Hi,
Just a brief report from the other side of the world to most people on this forum:-)
Last night, was an observing evening at the dark site of one the clubs i belong to - the West Of London Astronomy Society. Was cloudy all day then glancing out at 9:30pm saw the skies had cleared. Yahoo and a quick call confirmed a few people were going down so, packed the 12in dob, a few eps and a binos and off i set, at 11pm. Got there at midnight, there were 2 other guys with a 8in meade and a newt on GEM already setup.
The site was not especially dark, especially compared to the Aussie skies I saw this summer, but a LOT better than my North London back yard. Could just see the milky way around zenith. After a quick scan with binos, I realised that i'd left my finder at home - Doh!! This limited targets to the bright and the bold. First up was the pleiades, not bad but just too big to have an impact in my 1 deg FOV, much better in the bins. Next I wondered over and saw m27 in the other guys scopes - nice. Swung my own round to m36 then m37 and m38 in Auriga. As an aside i still haven't got round to getting a collimator for my dob, which at f4 it really should have. Nontheless it still produced that sparkly gems in (slightly bluish) velvet look - very pretty. Tried to go for M42 which was rising but it was covered by advancing cloud in the south east. Moved over to the other side of the sky and looked at m31 with m110 and m32 visible in the fov, very nice but i didnt see any dust lanes, sky too bright perhaps? Tried to go for the veil but to no avail. looked at alberio - always pleasing and easy to find. just cruised up the milky way in cygnus thought about the North America nebula but decided that would be a waste of time in the sky conditions. finally looked at M42 as the clouds had dispersed - nice structure despite the lightdome from London. Also saw about 10 meteors during the session, a few of which left lingering trails, one of the other guys caught 20, i wonder if these were orionids? Finally packed up at 3am and headed home - tired but happy!!
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