One of those sessions where Weatherpro HD said there would be a window of clear skies for about an hour. With the lack of observing time recently, I’m starting to exploit even the shortest of observing opportunities that are on offer at the moment. Session Data Date: 19/11/2014 Time: 19:21 – 20:14 UTSeeing: I Perfectly Stable, Transparency: IV Somewhat Clear, Temp: 11c, Air Pressure: 1013mb, Humidity: 86%, Wind Speed: 9mph. NGC7243, Caldwell 16 In the Altair Astro 250mm, 40mm Plossl,…
Observing Session: 5, November
Well another poor few weeks for observing, so I have been forced out of desperation to go out on Guy Fawkes night with a Full Moon for company. Most of the fireworks must have been let off earlier, as I didn’t see anything go off while I was out. There was a little smell of smoke in the air, but nothing that was visible lurking 20 degrees above the horizon that I could see….
Observing Session: 26, September
Well it doesn’t happen very often, but I awoke at 2:30 in the morning and looking out the window, the sky was clear. Feeling remarkable spritely, I thought “What the hell’ and decided to open up. This was also an ideal opportunity to give the new filterwheel another play. While I looked at a number of objects I really just wanted to see how the views changed using the different filters, so apart from…
Observing Session: 24, September
What’s this? Clear skies and no Moon! A perfect night to try out my new Turret/Filter wheel combo. It’s also the first real chance to get a decent look at the Veil Nebula in Cygnus. I’ve tried to observe it a number of time with my own as well as 100mm Tak, bit its always been a disappointment – that is until this evening 🙂 Session Data Date: 24/09/2014 Time: 19:40 – 23:31 UT Seeing: I…
More New Toys
Well things have been a bit quiet on the observing front recently. There have been one or two clear nights, but these seem to have coincided with quite a bit of Moon. This coupled with fairly awful transparency, meant for the most part I couldn’t be arsed to open up. The other contributory factor has been that my Van Slyke Turret has been in the engineering shop for the last six weeks having a…
Observing Session: 25, July
A rather nice session plagued with various gremlins. The first Go-To after boot up, sent the mount off to some random spot in the sky. A slew to a known star and a ‘Synchronise’ solved the problem and got Go-To’s landing within the 40mm . I have no idea why the mount does this from time to time – it’s nothing serious, but it does piss me off as it happens for no apparent reason. The…