Huttoft Car Terrace Observing session 02/05

[oldfruit]

Due to the great weather, myself, Dave (cosmicdave) and Paul (tbird) decided to take advantage of the great conditions and have an extra observing session at the Huttoft Car Terrace between Anderby Creek and Sutton on Sea.

 

Conditions looked good upon arrival and we proceeded to set up the scopes. In use tonight were a 12 inch Skywatcher Flextube, 8 inch Skywatcher dob, 12 inch Revelation dob and a Celestron 9.25 so a good variety of equipment was available.

 

We started the evening having a peek at Jupiter but the sky was boiling quite badly in that direction and high power viewing was not possible but some low power views were had and showed the main cloud bands and the 4 moons were also visible.

In contrast to Jupiter, Saturn was in the opposite area of sky and for some reason the seeing looked better. Saturn was returned to several times throughout the night and gave some pleasing views, especially through the 8 inch dob and the 9.25.

 

As it was quite dark at this site some nice views of dso`s were had tonight. M51 was looking good tonight, especially as it is almost overhead at a reasonable hour. I have been spending a lot of time observing this object lately and quite a lot of detail could be seen tonight. There were some brighter areas visible in the spiral arms though try as i might i still cannot make out the arm that connects the 2 galaxies.

 

 

The globular clusters were looking spectacular tonight. M3, M5, M13 all bright and resolvable in the scopes used. The propellar was easily visible in M13 and i often ask myself how i never spotted it before?

 

The Black Eye Galaxy M64 was quite bright and the dark dust lane from where the galaxy gets its name was showing well.

The sombrero galaxy looked nice with the central dust lane cleanly separating the top and bottom parts of the galaxy.

 

Myself and Paul spent some time observing the Owl Nebula and could quite clearly make out one of the eyes but were struggling to make out the second. This object was mostly observed using an O111 filter and it greatly improved the contrast of this sometimes "ghostly" object.

 

The Ring Nebula looked nice and bright and took high power reasonably well, as did The Dumbell Nebula. Usind an O111 filter on the Dumbell really brought out the outer shell detail that was really quite faint when the filter was not used.

 

Comet Panstarrs could be seen but it really has faded fast and was looking pretty poor even in one of the 12 inch dobs.

 

Had a quick scan with the 10x50 bins and could see M51! Also M81 and M82.

 

Seeing the constellation of Cygnus rising and the bright portion of the Milky Way running through it was one of the hi-lites of the night for me. It looked pretty stunning and was a welcome sign of the return of the popular summer skies to come.

 

Thanks very much to Paul and Dave for making it an enjoyable evenings viewing.

[Doc]

Really enjoyed reading this report Mark, sounds like a fab night with the added bonus of dark skies.

[Daz Type-R]

Great report - fantastic mid week viewing - I`m envious.

[+RonC]

Let's hope it's as good from the Wainfleet site at the weekend! Good report thanks Mark 

[tbird]

Nice report Mark, a good night's observing, a bit tired today though   

 

The globular clusters were looking good, also bagged M92 in the dob. Saturn was looking good later, nice to have a scope tracking it so we could keep going back for a view.

 

M51 was about at it's best being overhead but I didn't spend long enough on M101 to pick any detail out.

[cosmic dave]

Great report mark, glad we managed to get a bit of shelter from that north Sea breeze.