Thanks for the kind? words Tony
I didn't realise M13 was a race. I must say though, it was gratefying to see him wander off on his own and hunt down the glob in binos after we actually examined a star chart together to find out whether it had risen - no buttons pressed on this one - that's why I think it was remebered
We had a reasonable night. The trip up there saw us surrounded in clouds, and we even drove through a light shower as we approached the observing site. We had to contend with a few clouds during the twighlight period, but once the sun had well and truley set the clouds seemed to evaporate away, and we had no cloud trouble at all. There air temp was very comfortable and we had no dew at all. The transperancy was exellent, but of course there is always "one at every party", and tonight it was the seeing's turn to misbehave. Stars up to 40 degrees above the horizon were flickery, infact while watching Scorpio rise above the murk a group of us noticed Antares almost disappear and reappear a number of times.
We started off by checking out a comet that was very close to 47Tuc. I think someone mentioned it was Linear 1, but I am yet to check this out. I then showed Tony N1365, a lovely galaxy in Fornax that shows distinct spiral arms coming off the central bar. We then checked out N2808 which was a lovely glob in both our scopes. Later we turned our attention to the Orion nebula. Here we saw the same ruddy pink colour in my dob that I have reported before, which also showed through in Tony's 10" LX200. I then showed Tony the dull nebula where the Horsehead lives. Unfiltered (in my dob) we could make out the dark area in the background nebula that was the Horsehead, but no detail at all - no horse head shape.
As Tony mentioned, I gave him the cook's tour of the skies, but what might be surprising for him is I really only touched the surface of what is out there. I gave him some highlights and was concertrating on the brightest and most interesting objects, that he may have a chance of seeing from his home, and his planned observatory. We spent some time on M104 - Sombrero as Tony commented on it appearing to be a "true" galaxy in the image it shows. We also examined the Homonculus nebula at high power, picking out and matching the detail in the Hubble photo.
A highlight for me was finally getting the opportunity to chase down Shapley 1 (a lovely planetary nebula ring in Norma) with my dob. While the goto boys where trying to figure out how to enter the coordinates into the hand controller I had a the very coarse Cambridge star atlas and set about a hunt in the area. After a short minute of two I had located the faint ring, well before the button pushing had finished.
I would just like to add - I can't believe how many times Striker was checking his hair!! I kid you not - I caught him at just after 2am shining his red torch into the front of his SCT checking to make sure hair number 22747 wasn't out of place
Didn't get an IceInSpace group shot with my camera, but I did get some I will add.
Just like to thank Tony for the lift out there and the great entertaining company he provided - a most enjoyable night
