Last night was just one of those night's, when we were supposed to have clear skies all night. So myself and one of my observing buddies, decided at 20:00 to GO for it and head over to our adopted observing site.
The skies where I live in Macclesfield, and where Paul lives in Hazel Grove, where clearing, or so we thought!
I arrived after a very leisurely and relaxing drive to find the sky was almost, but not quite clear. I could see Vega (alpha Lyrae) over head and soon had my 10" OD250s f4.8 set up and collimated. What a joy it is to use a Dobsonian!
Below is a short account of my observations.
Observing site
Fernilee reservoir
Seeing A2 Transparency 5 Naked eye limiting magnitude +5.4
Telescope 10" OD250S f4.8 Deluxe
M15.
Very easy to find and resolve. x120 (10mm Plossl) very bright core, with granulation. x150 (Vixen lv zoom) granulation is now stellar with hundreds of faint stars visible, more stars are visible with averted vision. M15 is very small when compared with M13 and M92.
NGC6960.
I had difficulty finding this with cloud passing over head, but eventually I was successful. 51 Cyg is a faint m5.4 star that is easily visible to the unaided eye from this observing sight.
NGC6960 bisects 51 Cyg and is there for, very easy to observe, when the skies are clear!
At x34 with a Baader UHC filter, the Witches broom nebula as it is called, is very faint against a very rich milky way star field.
Using my 24mm Panoptic with a OIII filter, greatly enhances the view. NGC6960 is a bright luminous grey streak, with the southern portion brightest. I will study this region of space again on a better night.
Whilst hunting down NGC6960, I was lucky to spy some of the other bright parts of the Veil supernova remnant which I shall return to,when we are next UP there and the skies are more transparent.
M31.
I never tire of looking at the Andromeda galaxy so tonight was know exception. M31 was just on the fringes of naked eye visibility, so I was able to hone in on it with out any trouble.
For the best views of M31 I use a low power eyepiece, as this allows me to see all the galaxy.
x34 (Celestron Ultima) Bright nucleus with fainter spiral arms visible, this is a glorious sight to behold. M32 is also visible in the same eyepiece field.
Jupiter.
x120, North equatorial belt, very dark, and brown in colour. South equatorial still absent.
Unfortunately, we were clouded out after 00:45hrs despite the forecast of clear skies for most of the night. Paul's power supply was miss behaving, so we agreed to called it a night hoping for a decent break, for the peak of the Perseids on Thursday night.
