Category Archives: Observing

Photoshop sketch experiment

A couple of weeks ago, I tarted up some sketches in Photoshop. A couple of these sketches were of portions of the Veil Nebula in Cygnus, and I decided that maybe they didn’t look quite nebulous enough as my sketchbook doesn’t have an entirely smooth surface so I tried an experiment with the Photoshop Elements Smudge Tool. I also made the stars rounder with the Blur Tool, although they turned out a bit fatter than intended, but I suppose they represent the sort of seeing we often get here!

It definitely needs a lot more experimentation to get it exactly right though. Here are the first sketches treated in this way, these are scanned straight from the original sketches as I did not bother re-drawing them from their raw state. Click for larger image.

NGC 6992/6995 above

NGC 6960 below

Binocular observing session 11-12 December 2009

Sod’s Law was in action last night as I had a severe cold which prevented a proper observing session with the 12 inch, and it was the clearest and most transparent sky we have had in ages. I had spent most of the day in bed with coughs, sneezes and fever, having been sent home from work at lunchtime, but something compelled me to look out of the window at 2330, I am not sure why I expected it to be clear as most of the day had been cloudy and a bit foggy. I felt a bit better and I hate wasting clear skies so decided on a short session; besides it would have been a bit foolish to have stayed out for any real length of time and get cold.
Obviously I didn’t feel like lugging the big scope out, or even one of its smaller friends, but I put on jeans, jumper and shoes and went out with the 8×42 binoculars instead. I also pulled out my UHC and OIII filters out to see what winter nebulae I could see with the binoculars.

11-12 December 2009; 2330 – 0005 GMT/UT
0.5

° above freezing
No wind
Excellent transparency apart from the odd bit of clouds on the horizon; out of 5, where 1 is bad and 5 excellent, it was 5. The seeing was reasonably steady too, Antoniadi II.
Naked eye limiting visual magnitude was 6.5

Of course, I just had to go for M42, the Orion Nebula. It is an irresistible object in any instrument, including binoculars, and is worth looking for even if it is the most observed deep sky object in the sky. I make a point of saying hello to it every year, as I do all my favourites, and I can’t wait to see it in the 12 inch. Huge, very bright, fan shaped, with four stars visible in the Trapezium. Needs no filtration, although UHC brings it out slightly better (OIII not as effective). M43 also visible as a little round patch.
Also looked at NGC 1981 and NGC 1980.

I also had a (over optimistic it has to be said) look for NGC 2024, the Flame Nebula, but I did not see it. I didn’t think I would in binoculars but, as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

NGC 2237-8/NGC 2246; the Rosette Nebula in Monoceros.
Large, round and bright with the star cluster NGC 2244 at the centre. The nebula is only just visible without a filter, but the UHC makes it very easy to see. The OIII is also effective but it’s best with the UHC.

Ursa Major was low behind the trees but M81 and M82 were above the trees and easily seen with the 8x42s.

M31 was bright and huge through the binoculars, spanning the entire field of view. The core was bright and the spiral arms extensive. Good view of the dust lanes.

NGC 869 and NGC 884; the Double Cluster
Gorgeous through the binoculars. Very rich and large with the stars easily resolved.

Trumpler 2
Small fuzzy patch just SE of DC. Also NGC 957, another hazy patch.

NGC 1499; the California Nebula. This isn’t quite as easy to see as the Rosette, especially without a filter, but the UHC filter brings it out and you can see a hazy brightening of faint nebulosity extending east-west, immediately north of Menkib.

By then it was 0035 (GMT/UT) and I was getting cold and coughing a lot so I had to reluctantly drag myself away from the sky and head indoors and back to bed.

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The odds on me attending the 2010 Texas Star Party have slightly improved. I have got a temporary job until Christmas and have so far, managed to save nearly half the air fare. Hopefully, a run of employment between now and April will enable me to get there. The air fare’s most of the battle, with prices ranging between £350 and £550 (of course I can’t leave it too late before getting the plane ticket, must get that in January or February or it’ll become more expensive), while the TSP, including accommodation, is fairly cheap and doesn’t require a lot of saving for. The other big ‘expense’ is the cash for any goodies that might catch my eye when I am there such as a 2-inch UHC filter that I want for viewing large nebulae with my 35mm Televue Panoptic.

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I have retrieved my clear sky spreadsheet from the wreckage, scanned it twice with Norton, and loaded it onto the new computer. I had been keeping a note of the weather in the intervening period – not exactly hard when it’s mostly been cloudy! – and have been able to pick up where I left off. November makes dismal viewing with two clear nights and one partially clear night in the whole month, but I wasn’t able to take advantage of those clear nights unfortunately. As noted in a previous entry, it has been two months of nearly continuous wind and rain, with a large part of the UK affected by flooding.

Observing by 97% moonlight

After what has seemed like an absolute eternity (in reality it was around two months – but that’s plenty long enough), I finally managed an observing session. Sure it was a very short observing session of one hour, but it was an observing session nonetheless.
The reason for this was that not only has the UK been battered by a succession of Atlantic storms leaving half the country under water, work and illnesses (a succession of nasty abcsesses) have also interfered with any hope of getting outside on the rare clear occasions.

It was clear this evening, so I set up my 12 inch Dob, despite the rising Moon which was one day past full so, as you’d expect, it was washing out the sky quite badly, an effect exacerbated by mist and high thin cloud. Despite this I decided to try an experiment. I wanted to see if NGC 404 was visible. This is a galaxy in Andromeda, adjacent to Mirach (it has the nickname The Ghost of Mirach) and it was visible. It’s not that faint anyway, but it’s the sort of thing you’d expect the Moon to kill stone dead. It was, as you’d expect, fainter and harder to see than usual, but otherwise visible.

Cygnus was getting low in the west but I decided to poke round there for a bit partly because it will soon be gone until next summer but also it was in the part of the sky opposite the Moon. Obviously I wasn’t going to be silly and hunt for nebulae that I had no chance of seeing in those conditions but I did seek out some clusters instead, open clusters are pretty immune to light pollution. One of the clusters observed was Collinder 419. To say that this was unspectacular is an understatement. ‘Boring’ is probably a more accurate description. It’s composed of three or four brightish stars and a few more nondescript fainter ones.

The session was short, due to the conditions, only an hour but after two months without, even an hour in crap conditions is better than nothing! Roll on the next clear night that has no Moon in the way!

It was also my scope’s first outing since I made the modifications to the mirror cell, with the new collimation springs from Bob’s Knobs. When I took it outside and set it up the collimation was only slightly out and it took hardly any time at all to get it spot on, a major improvement on before. My new laser collimator also works nicely.

Observing 26-27 September 2009

The third clear night in a row! So I lugged the scope out to cool down and went back inside to watch Casualty on BBC1 (Yeah, yeah, I know it’s sad, but I like Casualty – for those outside the UK, Casualty is a BBC-shown hospital-based drama series, not unlike ER) while waiting for the scope to cool and the first quarter Moon to set.
Once Casualty had finished I finished gathering my stuff together and decided to look at Jupiter, as I had not tried out the 12 inch on any Solar System objects before now. I know the blog title says Visual Deep Sky Observing, but once in a while I like looking at shallow sky stuff. Jupiter, despite being at quite a low altitude, gave me one of the best views I have had of it in the Northern Hemisphere. Bands and festoons were obvious and I could see the Red Spot. Even sticking the magnification up to 300x didn’t degrade it too much, although at that magnification the seeing, while pretty good wasn’t perfect, meant the image was a little unsteady.
Jupiter was also handy for aligning the Telrad and 8×50 finder.

Ok, onto the ‘serious stuff’. I planned to knock off some Herschels tonight, so that was to be the main part of the session.

Conditions:
Chilly: 8 degrees Celsius (later 6 degrees C) with 82% humidity – the dew became a nuisance later on. No wind, 1st quarter Moon set late PM. Seeing II, transparency II-III. Visual limiting magnitude with the unaided eye was around 6.2 to start with, increasing to 6.4, this is based on how many stars I can see in the Great Square of Pegasus. However skyglow, due to moisture in the atmosphere, was quite pronounced; on drier nights you hardly notice it.

Instrument: 12 inch Dobsonian

NGC 7619 and 7626, galaxies in Pegasus. I had to wait until Pegasus and Pisces were clear of the house roof before looking for these, which are part of the Pegasus 1 galaxy cluster. I saw NGC 7619 and NGC 7626 with no problem, although dew formation on my secondary wiped out the other, fainter, galaxies in the area. Dew is a major problem here in the UK and I am going to have to make a dew shield for both the scope itself and the Telrad (the latter being very prone to dewing up).
Both galaxies are oval, with brighter middles. NGC 7619 is the brighter of the two. Nothing else seen, due to the aforementioned dewing. 61x, 101x

NGC 7742, galaxy in Pegasus. Oval, fairly dim although easy to find and see. Slightly brighter middle. 101x.

NGC 205, galaxy in Andromeda. When I saw this on the Herschel 400 list I looked for it on the chart. I couldn’t find it on the chart, which was odd, but there was a reason for this; that reason is that it is better known as M110, one of the companions of M31. As Homer Simpson would say ‘D’oh!’. Large, oval, fairly bright. Brightens somewhat, gradually towards centre. In a nice starry field. Fainter than M31 although it would be a showpiece in its own right if it wasn’t overshadowed by its bigger, brighter and more famous friend. 61x

Looked for NGC 891. I have observed this galaxy before, with my 8 inch scope, but completely failed to find it this time. 891 is noted as being hard to find, but after 40 minutes of searching I gave up. I think I was in the right place, but the dew was making life awkward and wiping this already quite faint galaxy out.

NGC 752, open cluster in Andromeda. Large, loose cluster which fits neatly into 1 degree field of 40mm Plossl eyepiece, with room to spare. I started a sketch of this (although I hate sketching open clusters!) but didn’t finish it due to the secondary dewing up. 61x

NGC 1664, open cluster in Auriga. Small, triangular o.c. with a chain coming south-east from it, like a tail. In fact it does remind me of a cat, with two brighter stars as eyes. Not rich. Around 30 stars of uniform brightness. 101x

Because of the dewing, a bad back and cold feet, I packed up earlier than intended at 0230 BST. Not a bad session, and I managed to tick off some Herschels, but the dew was a major pain. I am going to have to fashion a dew shield for the OTA and one for the Telrad.

I have sent off to First Light Optics for a new laser collimator, hopefully that should arrive tomorrow, but with the Moon on the rise again and some more unsettled weather this week, I won’t be doing much observing for a while. As a footnote, I woke up this morning to a weird red glow over on the computer desk. Yep, my collimator had come alive; I must have left it switched on. This isn’t going to save it from the bin, though, its unreliability means that its fate is sealed!

Aggravation, clouds and some galaxies

The forecast was clear for the night, with a run of settled weather and high pressure predicted by the BBC weather website for the next few days, so I lugged out the 12 inch for – hopefully – a good long session.
Unfortunately the session got off to a bad start when my watch broke (the pins that hold the strap in place). Then once I’d set the scope up and had left it to cool for an hour I then discovered that the collimation, for some reason, was miles out. Trying to sort out the collimation made it worse and things weren’t helped when the batteries in the laser collimator died; naturally I didn’t have any spares, so with the most taboo swear words I could think of I hurled the collimator across the garden in the dark. Not a good idea, as I then had to get a torch and hunt for it among the bushes, fortunately I found it after a brief search. Also not a good idea as the near neighbours across the way may well have heard some exclamations of ‘for f**k’s sake!’, ‘s**t’ and even worse!

I got my visual collimator out and tried to use that, but visually collimating the scope requires a second person to look through the eyepiece or twiddle the collimation knobs or one person doing it but needing the reach of a gibbon to do both at the same time. I had neither so I adjusted it as best I could and left it at that. I tried it on the Double Cluster and, fortunately, the view was reasonable, although high powers left a lot to be desired, so I decided to get on with the session. I do need some stiffer collimation springs, so I will send off for some from Bob’s Knobs. These will improve the collimation no end, according to others who use the GSO/Revelation and Lightbridge scopes.

By this time I had wasted two hours sorting the bloody scope out, and therefore the observing session was shortened as a result. But I had all night…

Conditions: Chilly at 8 degrees C. Humidity was 82% so there was a fair bit of dew falling.
No wind. No Moon (waxing crescent had set earlier in evening). Limiting magnitude to the unaided eye was around 6.3 with seeing of II-III on the Antoniadi scale of seeing. Transparency, on a scale of I (excellent) to V (very poor) was III.

Instrument: 12 inch Dobsonian.

I began in Perseus, looking for the Perseus galaxy group, but failed to see it. This should not have been difficult, but the combination of hazy skies and less-than-perfect collimation probably conspired against me here.

Moving on to Pegasus, a rich galaxy hunting ground, brought some better luck. I quickly found NGC 7479. This galaxy looks, to direct vision, like it is an edge on; however averted vision shows it to be rounder and with the hint of spiral arms. The elongation seen with direct vision is the central bar of the galaxy. 101x

NGC 14, galaxy in Pegasus – small fairly bright. Oval. Elongated north-south. Slightly brighter middle. I thought I’d found NGC 7814, which is what I was looking for, but it looks nothing like it when compared to sketches and photos in books and on the net. It’s definitely NGC 14. 101x

NGC 23, galaxy in Pegasus – small, very bright. Elongated north-south. There is a star superimposed on the northern end of the galaxy. 101x

I had planned an all night session but, just to round off an incredibly annoying and frustrating session, unforecast clouds built up at around 0200 BST. So much for the Mess Office and their forecasts. So I packed up at 0230, after waiting for the clouds to clear. They did eventually, but left in their wake terrible transparency so I called it a night. Not a great session, a paltry three sketches made and not much done.

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As a little postscript, I went to a jewellers to get my watch fixed this afternoon, and while I was in there bought three button batteries for my laser collimator. Two small pins for my watch and three tiny batteries came to the princely sum of £13. Daylight robbery.

I have sent off to Bob’s Knobs for some collimation springs and secondary knobs. I don’t need new primary knobs as these are ok. Hopefully, these should enable the scope to remain aligned for longer.

Tunes to observe by

A lot of amateur astronomers like to have a few tunes on the go, to observe by. Personally, most of the time I don’t – I like the night sounds such as barking dogs and foxes, owls, snuffling badgers, the odd distant car or motorbike (not sure why, but I find the sound of distant traffic at night very evocative – where are they going? It gives me itchy feet even if, as in all likelihood it is, it’s just someone returning from work or going to visit friends) and even the odd squeaking rat or mouse. Living in a rural spot makes me lucky because there’s not a lot of irritating human noise such as shouting, loud music or tvs.
Also the lack of music enables you to hear that (imagined) psychotic murderer or mugger creeping up on you; not likely in the fenced-in back garden, though – I hope!

However a nearby music festival the other night had me going indoors to fetch my iPod to listen to something I want to listen to and not some crap foisted on me by an event a couple of miles away.

You see threads on Cloudy Nights and other forums, asking what music people like to observe by and, for a lot of people, it tends to be classical music. Some people like the synthesiser ‘space music’, some like trance. I have to admit I don’t like any of those forms of music; most classical music just does not ‘do it’ for me, it goes in one ear and out of the other, while I was put right off ‘space music’ when I worked in the local planetarium during the summer of 1999 (the job was great, but I got really sick during the course of that summer and ended up in hospital for two months and, even now, as a reminder of a really bad time in my life, space music makes me want to run a mile). Trance, drum ‘n’ bass and all that sort of stuff just makes me want to stick screwdrivers in my eardrums.

No, the music of choice for when I observe, and fancy a few toons as company, is metal and rock. Some metal and rock is very evocative and lends itself to scoping the cosmos. Not just any old rock and metal, as punk and thrash, much as I love these forms, don’t quite cut it in an observing session. No, what you want is a good rocking tune, but coupled with a ‘space vibe’ to suit the magic of the cosmos.

Here are some of the tracks I like, which have a space or science fiction vibe to them, even the tracks listed that don’t have a space or sci-fi vibe still lend themselves to observing. It’s the feeling invoked by the music, rather than the content of the lyrics that matters.

Metallica – ‘Orion’
Metallica – ‘The Call of Ktulu’
Metallica – ‘The Thing That Should Not Be’
VoiVod – ‘Astronomy Domine’ (cover of a Pink Floyd song)
VoiVod – ‘Cosmic Drama’
VoiVod – ‘Psychic Vacuum’
VoiVod – ‘The Unknown Knows’
VoiVod – ‘Panorama’
Muse – ‘Starlight’
Muse – ‘Supermassive Black Hole’
Muse – ‘Plug in Baby’
Muse – ‘Knights of Cydonia’
Muse – ‘Space Dementia’
Muse – ‘Dark Shines’
Muse – ‘Dead Star’
Blue Oyster Cult – ‘Astronomy’ (also covered by Metallica)
Hawkwind – ‘Silver Machine’
Accept – ‘Midnight Highway’
Judas Priest – ‘Blood Red Skies’
Motorhead – ‘Capricorn’
Motorhead – ‘Metropolis’
Rammstein – ‘Spiel Mit Mir’
Manowar – ‘Spirit Horse of the Cherokee’

…I could go on, there are so many good rock and metal tunes out there, but only some lend themselves to observing.

Obviously music for observing is entirely down to personal taste but it isn’t just the realm of classical, trance, drum ‘n’ bass or synthesiser ‘space music’.

Observing session 16 September 2009

Another clear night, we’re doing fairly well this past month or so (in the past month, we have had 20 – yes TWENTY! – clear or partially clear nights. Can’t use all of them, unfortunately, but it’s nice to see), so I lugged the scope out onto the patio for a, hopefully lengthy as I have no work on at the moment, observing session.

There was a nice sunset:

Conditions:

Cool: 11C, 75% humidity (no dew, thankfully) and a very slight breeze, which picked up now and again and died down at intervals. No Moon. Transparency was not too good at first, quite obvious from the higher-than-usual extent of light domes from nearby towns, picking up at around 0030 BST to 0200 BST, and there were isolated drifting clouds although they weren’t enough to interfere with observing. The naked eye limiting magnitude was not as good as usual, around 6.0 to 6.2.

Again I spent a little too much time hunting for elusive stuff, mainly faintish galaxies that I should not have bothered with, given the less-than-great transparency. However, I am pleased with what I did observe, and got some good sketches too.

Instrument: 12 inch f/5 Dobsonian.

I have popped some sketches into this post, but they are rough as they are the original sketches and not redrawn ones.

First up was NGC 40, a planetary nebula in Cepheus. Bit of a rough sketch, though – my writing is terrible and it’s not scanned properly! The nebula was bright and obvious, looking like a fat star at low power, and obviously nebulous at higher powers. It’s round with a bright middle, appearing fatter when looked at with averted vision. Averted vision also hints at a darker area round the bright middle portion. OIII does not enhance the view or provide more detail.


I also found NGC 7662, the Blue Snowball, in Andromeda, easily enough this time. Heaven knows why I failed to find it the other evening, probably a combination of factors, not least the dew making life awkward. NGC 7662 is strikingly sky blue, and round with slightly fluffy-looking edges. Hint of darker centre. OIII makes little difference to the view, UHC even less so.



I had intended to make the pn blue in Photoshop, as it appeared in the scope, but having scanned it in greyscale this obviously wasn’t going to work! The pic hasn’t scanned very well, also I think I need to draw the eyepiece representation circle a bit darker in future.

I also spent quite a lot of time on M33, the big galaxy in Triangulum. Ok, it’s a Messier lollipop, but I wasn’t looking at the galaxy as a whole, I was looking for HII regions within the galaxy. Using a chart from the net I identified NGC 595 and NGC 604. I thought I saw more, but a larger scope and darker, more transparent skies would be a help. NGC 604 is easy to find, a triangle of stars pointing straight at it helps in locating it, it looked elongated, east to west, and showed a bit of brightening within. NGC 595 was much smaller, a roundish knot of light. It is always interesting to see ‘objects within objects’ particularly within external galaxies (M31 also contains ‘objects within objects, as do the Magellanic Clouds, although these, sadly, are not visible from Europe or the United States).

I attempted the Pegasus 1 galaxy cluster, which at mag 11.1 should be accessible to the 12 inch, but there was nothing doing on this front, due mainly to the fairly murky sky. The same went for the Perseus Cluster, with ranges of magnitudes between 11.6 and 12.5. I’ll have another go at these, on a more transparent night sometime this autumn and, in the case of Perseus, when it rises a bit higher. By the time Pegasus was higher the galaxies were behind the garden shed and the 12 inch is not exactly portable so I didn’t bother to try again.

The last object – or objects – was Stephan’s Quintet (Hickson 92) again. The transparency had improved by this time and the part of the sky where this is located was high. The Quintet was easy to find, located at the end of a chain of stars just SW of the bright galaxy NGC 7331, although not so easy to see. I sketched them, although I couldn’t finish the sketch due to the fact the transparency gave out again and the galaxies vanished like smoke. Btw, what looks like a galaxy to the bottom of NGC 7319 isn’t, it’s a smudge on the paper I forgot to rub out and which I failed to see in Photoshop.

The last object of the night was NGC 7000, the North America Nebula in Cygnus. This large nebula is naked eye in the right conditions. I could see it without the aid of scope or binoculars. OIII made it more obvious but UHC was even better, making it very obvious, and I could easily see the ‘Gulf of Mexico’ dark area.

Called it a night at just after 0210 as the transparency was giving out again and the clouds, formerly the odd one or two, were increasing.

Observing 12th Sept 2009

After the previous night’s short session, I was hoping for a clearer night last night and fortunately it was, although very wet (85% humidity and falling dew) and a little murky. There is a music festival (it’s called ‘Bestival’ but ‘Craptival’ would be more accurate. There are some bloody awful acts on the bill and it has a ghastly ‘family friendly’ vibe to it) underway at the moment, a couple of miles away, and the sounds of dodgy music were floating down the valley so I got the iPod and listened to much better music instead. Not only that, this thing was flooding the north-western and western sky with light pollution – fortunately it’s only one weekend a year.
The dew was a nuisance, completely fogging the Telrad and finderscope meaning I had to keep wiping these off every few minutes. I need to buy a dew heater when I have some more money (unfortunately my car tax is due at the end of the month so I have to save for that).

Conditions:
Cool (11 C), 85% humidity, lots of dew. Limiting magnitude around 6.0 later on, due to rising last quarter Moonlight being scattered around the sky. No wind. Seeing steady but transparency not as good as recently (when clear!).
Instrument: 12 inch f/5 Dobsonian

Made a few sketches, of NGC 404, NGC 7332 and NGC 6910 before getting hacked off with the rubbish dewy conditions, light pollution from both the Moon and the pop festival and a bad arm (I have an infection in my left arm and hand) and packing my stuff away and going to bed at 1 am. I also spent far too much time looking for NGCs 147, 185, 7292, 7459 and 7662 but failed to see them. Given the conditions – constant dewing of Telrad and finderscope and the less-than-great transparency – it was not surprising I failed to see the galaxies (147, 185, 7292 and 7459) but failing to even find 7662, aka the Blue Snowball, a planetary nebula in Andromeda, was surprising.

NGC 7332, a galaxy in Pegasus, was easy to find. It is a bright, edge-on galaxy with a brighter core. 190x

NGC 6910, an open cluster in Cygnus, is a nice object. It is dominated by two bright orange-yellow stars and is shaped like a branch or crooked ‘y’. There are nine or so other stars, which are fainter, white ones plus some even fainter ones. 138x.

It was annoying to make so few observations but, as I had spent (wasted!) a lot of time looking for other stuff and the conditions were a pain it was better than nothing.

Quick session, September 10th, 2009

This was a very quick session, due to having to be at work at the uncivilised hour of 8am the following morning. I intended it to be a Herschel object session, and indeed it was, although it was one of ‘those’ evenings when I actually didn’t find many of the targets I was after. I was after open clusters in Cassiopeia and only observed two or three in the end, plus made a sketch of M103, which I think of as the Northern Hemisphere’s answer to the Jewel Box in Crux, and which I can’t resist.
I had forgotten my circle template for sketches (a plastic thing off individual coffee filters) and used a salmon tin – Tesco own brand salmon tins, at two and a half inches, are just not big enough for sketches and sketches end up squashed.
Another problem was the crap transparency. It had been clear all day and, typically clouds rolled in just as I’d set the big scope up and although they cleared the transparency was crap throughout the session.

Observed NGC 457, an open cluster in Cassiopeia – known popularly as the ET cluster (it does look somewhat like the hideous little alien in that ghastly film), the Johnny 5 cluster (it looks more like that little robot in Short Circuit) or the Owl cluster.

Also observed NGC 663 and then sketched M103, as mentioned above. All in all, a bit of a disappointing session but better than nothing as it looked like being earlier in the session. Packed up and went to bed by 11pm, due to having to get up for work the next day.

Herschel 400

I have started a Herschel 400 observing program and I have dedicated a seperate blog to it. All Herschel 400 observations will go into that blog, although ALL observing sesh’s will still be recorded on this one.
I have, in the past, seen a lot of the H400 objects although I have not systematically done a dedicated H400 program, until now but, as I have a new scope, I am starting from scratch, beginning with the observations made during my most recent session the other night. I was thinking of getting into the H400 a while back, but never got started, for various reasons including a dodgy scope, other commitments and downright laziness!

Herschel 400 blog