Wymeswold 19th April.

[Daz Type-R]

Here is another attempt at a meeting report from Wymeswold, 19th April.

 

After much deliberating throughout the day, we eventiually settled on Wymeswold (well Sheila settled on Wymeswold, Craig, Stephen and myself just folllowed the cakes.......) as according to the weather reports Wymeswold was supposed to be the better of the two dark sites.

 

I turn up just before 21:00 hrs to find everybody there, so settled on a spot at the end of the row, out of most peoples way.

 

I`m going to attempt an attendees list, I`m useless with names so sorry if I miss you off, it's not intentional.....

 

Myself, Stephen, Craig, Sheila, Eddy, Tobias + his better half Claire, Andy + Andy's mate (name escapes me), I think somebody was there called Derek (is it Orion?????) and I`m almost certain there was somebody else but I can't remember their name (really sorry).

 

So it took me about 35 minutes to unpack the car, set up the dob and then align the finders to the primary and polar align (polar aligning a dob ).

 

It was at this point I decided to say hello to everyone as I wanted to set up in the last scrap of light that was available.

 

First up was Tobias for a look at his home made mount with a Skytee 2 head, awesome bit of DIY, if he said he bought it from a shop, I would of beleived him, the build quality is immense, wish I had that kind of skill.

 

Quick chat with Tobias and Claire then on to the next lot, Andy I beleive with his friend, quick chat with them about collimation etc and a few other bits, then popped over to see Sheila, Stephen, Craig and Eddy.  Stephen was happily shooting M101 using the Luminescence filter, looked good, everything seemed to be going well, Sheila, well what can I say, lets leave it at teething problems and move on from there, but the mount looked the bees knees, lovely bit of kit! Sheila though seemed quite happy as I think she had ironed out some bugs/glitches, so one happy camper.

 

Quick cup of tea and a cake (or two) then around 22:00 I thought I had better get some observing done.

 

Quick look at Jupiter just to see what the conditions were like, usual 2 bands with with 4 moons visable, there was quite a lot of murk around with some terrible sky glow from the surrounding cities, which was a surprise, also Mr Blobby was up, so that may of had an impact.

 

For the first time ever, I actually had an observing plan, 6 new Messier objects to track, mostly in the North (as I can't see North at home) so I set about my first one.

 

Completly off plan, the first object to find was Panstarrs for Tobias and Claire, after 2-3 minutes of searching I found it, but it was very, very poor, nothing like I had seen it two weeks prieviously, but they seemed happy enough.

 

Back to the plan.

 

M103, an open cluster in Cassiopeia, 27" above the horizon so right in the murk and LP, at 7.4 mag I thought I may of had an issue finding it, but after a quick alt/az co-ordinates search using my IPhone and Sky Safari +, using the setting circle I found it after a minute or so.  I was not sure I had found it at first, but luckily Sky Safari has pictures as well so I was happy that I had found the right target.  I would even go as far as to say one of the poorest Messier's I have ever witnessed, could be down to the LP, I`m not sure.  At least I bagged a new one!

 

While in Cassiopeia, I went to find M52, a few degrees lower than M103. I thought I would struggle, but it is a mag 6.9 object so stood out well amongst the murk and back ground stars.

 

Another quick chat with folks then got back to my observing list.

 

Next up I moved East wards into Cygnus, looking to find M29 and M39, both open clusters, mag 6.5 and 4.5 respectivly.  Again, at 8 and 13" above the horizon, I thought I may struggle to spot them, but moving that little bit further East dramatically improved the seeing, as the murky orange glow of LP faded away.  Nice pair of open clusters, enjoyed them for a few minutes before I went off track to try and find M101 for Tobias and Claire (couldnt find it for some reason???).

 

At this point I wandered off for more tea, more cake and a very, very brief demo for Andy's mate regarding collimation with a laser vs collimation with a cheshire.

 

Wandered back out to chat with Stephen and Sheila when they announced they were packing up due to laptop/battery/something issues so I hurried back to try and bag my last 2 Messier objects on my observing plan.  As it turns out I only managed 1 as I spent soo long looking at it, I didn't have time for the last one.

 

M57 the ring nebula, never seen it before in my scope (seen it in other peoples but if I haven't found it myself it doesn't count).  Totaly blown away with that so thought I would finish on a high. Loved it.

 

So people started to go, I assisted with packing, tidying up, turning water off etc and left Wymeswold about 1:20am ish, got home and in bed about 2:15.

 

Fantastic night, fantastic company, fantastic food - what more could you ask for.

Edited April 20, 2013 by Daz Type-R

[BAZ]

Excellent report there Darren, I really enjoyed reading it. It looks like the setting circle works well.

 

A shame I couldn't make it.

[T A WOW]

A great report Daz. Thanks for the help finding stuff for us. Panstarrs was certainly past its best but, thanks to you l can say i saw it.

[tuckstar]

Great night great company, thanks Daz for helping my friend Tim with his tal.he'll be back again and on the forum soon.

Again great to put names to faces and scopes.