The weather has been trying to give me clear skies during the period of darkness for weeks, but not until last night, has it actually succeded. Unfortunately, it coincided with a 98% illuminated Moon, which completely drowned out hope of seeing any galaxies or faint nebulae. Looking at my progress through the Caldwell catalogue, I seem to have done all the low lying fruit, so the majority of objects still to observe are guess…
Finished at last: Observing Session 6, August
Well my prediction of the astronomical observers version of plague and pestilance made on my previous post, has been born out. The weather this Summer has been dire! While the days have been quite nice, as soon as it gets dark, the cloud cover descends. I cannot remember a worse late Spring and early Summer period since I got into this astronomy malarky. The good news is that last Thursday night, I finally completed…
Well that's buggered the weather for a bit…..
There is a tradition at my local astronomy club that when one of us acquires a new piece of kit, that cloud and pestilence will descend upon the rest of us for at least a month. Well I’m afraid that it’s my fault this time, as I have just acquired a new toy 🙂 Having decided I wanted something with a little more aperture and focal length than my TMB, my initial thought was to find a 100mm…
Observing Session: 22, April
With the wind being 5 mph over my 10mph limit – the observatory roof could go airborne over this – and a clear Moonless night, it seemed a shame to miss out on some observing. Having just put the TMB back on the mount and collimated it to the big scope, I decided to take my fairly new 10×60 finder scope off the Losmandy and mount it on the Alt/Az Sabre mount. While a…
Observing Session: 21, April
This evenings session was Galaxies all the way. The nights are now starting to warm up a little and it’s nice to observe wearing just two fleeces now 🙂 Leaving behind the fleece lined trousers and boots as well as the outer jacket and wooly hat, means Winter is now well and truly behind us. I’m hoping I can cram in a a load more observing sessions before that June/July period where it never really get…
Observing Session: 14, April
Another long spell without cloud. Well that’s not exactly true, as there have been a few clear nights in batches. One forecasted and gave cloudless skies, but with a full moon and lots of high thin stuff, i didn’t even bother to venture out. The other a few weeks later didn’t look to bad, but with lots of early morning starts, I’ve not been able to stay awake long enough to do anything useful….