Observing Reports
September 2006
17th – 18th September 2006
This was my first time out in my new back garden with full darkness.
Metcheck.com seems to have been right for a change and the sky was cloud free, resulting in the most amazing view of the sky I have ever seen.
I went out at 11:30pm and took in the sights for the first few minutes. The Milky Way was easily visible and I could also find the Double Cluster in Perseus and M31 (The Andromeda Galaxy) with the naked eye. Absolutely stunning!!!
So many stars on view! Perseus was especially interesting as there were a lot of interesting patches to look at, all this still without the telescope.
I was pretty excited about what I could see I went inside and got my wife out for a look also. After a few minutes she could see the Milky Way and was quite impressed. Pointing out different objects too her was great fun and we shared a really nice night under the stars.
Ok it was about time I got the telescope setup and take a look around. I used the Orion 80ED as I was going to try guiding a bit more. First stop for us was M31, a nice splodge of grey mist then over to M45, which is slowly getting higher each night.
We also viewed M27, Alberio, M29, The Double Cluster, Vega and the area around Cygnus.
All objects looked great with the Orion 80ED. It was getting late so my wife turned in and I was left to give guiding another try.
I carried out a wide field shot of the Milky Way 180 seconds and the image turned out quite nice. I used DSLR Focus to achieve proper focus and this was a good test of my equipment as the software worked really well. In the image you can see the North American nebula if you zoom in.
The first object of the night was to be M33, The Pinwheel Galaxy in Triangulum. I could not find a suitable guide star so I had to move on to M45 as it was a lot brighter.
Located M45 and positioned the camera correctly but unfortunately the guide scope had hazed up that much it could not detect the star. Oh well I hope I have better luck next time.
Had a fun night though.