Observation reports - Kerridge ...

Reading about other people's experiences at the eyepiece of a telescope often inspires us to view the glory of the night sky. Go forth and explore ...!

Remember, don't forget to send your observing reports to observations@maccastro.com.

26/06/05 - Meteor observation

Whilst travelling back from Shropshire during the early hours, I was feeling a little under the weather suffering from a rather unpleasant bout of hay-fever. All of a sudden, as I drove into the outskirts of Macclesfield, I was brought to my senses by an extremely bright meteor travelling very slowly in a North Northwesterly direction.

Rebecca who was with me, also observed the object. We commented that we when we initially saw it, we needed a couple of seconds to actually register what it was!

My first words were 'It's an Earth-grazer', but I'm not sure it was ... The speed was correct - in fact it was the slowest meteor I've ever seen - but its tail was pretty short. Classical Earth-grazer's tend to have long, graceful tails. This led me to suggest that it may have been space junk entering the atmosphere on a shallow trajectory.

The nucleus was pure white and the tail was tinged with green. We only saw the object cover less than half the sky (before disappearing behind trees), but we were able to watch it for at least 5 seconds. I'd estimate the magnitude to be at least -10.

Did anyone else see this?

Andrew Greenwood

21/06/05 - Summer Solstice

The Sun is traditionally the main feature of the Summer Solstice, but for me, the Moon took centre stage.

As I drove out of Goostrey village from a very enjoyable lecture given by Professor Rod Davies (50 years at Jodrell Bank - Meteors to the Big Bang) I spotted the Moon, probably only a degree above the horizon - what a wonderful sight! It looked impressively large and had a yellow-orange hue.

I must admit that the journey down the lanes past Jodrell Bank left a little to be desired, swerving around as I craned my neck to see Luna rising. Yes, I know I should have just stopped my car! As I travelled adjacent to the radio telescope, I wanted to see if I could sit the Moon and Jodrell next to each other - at 45mph, this is not a good idea!

Anyway, as I took the road into Macclesfield I got a much better view. I remember thinking to myself that the whole vista looked poetic - and I think that was most definitely apt. Now higher, the Moon had entered some wispy Cirrus cloud, which made the moonlight diffuse and caused what only can be described as a 'glowing tail' trailing away to the two o'clock position. Magical.

Andrew Greenwood

18/06/05 - Observing report

Telescope - 8" Orion Optics Reflector

After watering the garden under a very clear semi-twilight sky, I thought I deserved to treat myself to some much deserved telescope time. So, out came my 8" reflector - I had no preconceived targets to hunt, I just wanted to meander through the stars.

Firstly though, as it was still rather light, Jupiter would be a good starting point. The seeing was pretty good and the planet could stand 200x through my TeleVue 3-6mm zoom eyepiece. The SPR was nicely defined and certainly more prominent than the NPR. The SEB and NEB showed nicely defined textural edges.

As the light faded, I travelled across the sky stopping at M13, the Great Globular cluster. With my 31mm TeleVue Nagler it was quite faint but exhibited mottling and I could pick out the brighter members of the cluster scattered across its diameter.

Next on to Vega - wow - it always looks so icy cold, with its steely bluish-white hue (even though it's extremely hot!). It's incredibly bright too, the diffraction spikes I could see in my eyepiece were like icycle shards. Whilst in Lyra, I popped my 12mm Nagler into the telescope and headed for the Double Double. Even though the 'scope wasn't quite to temperature the stars could be split at 104x. I wondered if an new observer would be able to discern the four stars? I feel that they'd need quite a long look at them before being able to say 'Yes'.

I then went to 6mm focal length by using my 2x PowerMate and without a shadow of a doubt the split between each component was large - you could get a bus through there!

After a lazy journey through Cygnus, I stopped by Alberio - it never fails to look beautiful.

I could see Altair in the constellation of Aquila above the tree tops and wondered if I could visit the Wild Duck cluster, M11, and wander through the Scutum Starcloud. It had been a long time since I'd looked at this part of the sky, so I didn't quite know where to find my targets. So sweeping with the telescope back and forth I hoped I might stumble across them ... After a few minutes 'There it is! This must be the Starcloud.' It was a lovely, large, loose scattering of stars a least two degrees across. Something was missing; M11. It should be within the Starcloud, but I couldn't see it. It was still light, so the cluster didn't appear particularly dense, but I expected this because of the conditions - it was the scale that threw me. So I referenced the position of the cluster and set off again to see if M11 was just a little further away. It was at this point that I realised that my telescope was actually pointing quite high and Scutum is relatively low. So as I'm sure you've realised - I was lost!

But then I stumbled across another bright cluster - now I really was onto something - but most definitely in uncharted waters. 'Uncharted waters' being the operative word here as I would find out later.

This second cluster was very nice indeed. Brighter than the first, it had an attractive arrangement of stars across it's middle, almost in the shape of the hull of a long boat.

I went back to the first cluster, then onto the second more than a few times, trying to reference where I was. It didn't help. Dipping below the first cluster I swept up a lovely double star, 36 Oph. It consists of two orange stars of 5th magnitude. What's so striking is the fact that they look exactly the same brightness - almost like cat's eyes looking back ...

When I ended my observations I simply had to find out what I'd been looking at. I got out my SkyAtlas 2000 map and took a look at where I'd been observing. It certainly wasn't Scutum, but seemed to be Serpens Cauda and Ophiuchus - hence the uncharted waters connection!

The following morning I sat out in the sunshine looking through my Norton Sky Atlas, a star-hopping book and various Sky and Telescope magazines. None made reference to what I had seen and none spoke in detail about celestial objects in Serpens Cauda and Ophiuchus. I seemed to have found objects that possibly not very many people have spent time looking at.

There was only one way to find out for sure what I was looking at - using planetarium software, but my computer was broken! I had to wait at least a week before I could check, and sure enough, there were my objects; NGC 6633 and IC 4665 respectively. What a relief, my quest was over ...

One final word - don't overlook these objects - they're well worth visiting during Summer starlit nights.

Andrew Greenwood

11/12/04 - Systematic Pleiades observation

Telescope - Megrez 80 ED
Eyepieces - 20mm 1.25" Tele Vue plossl; 30mm 2" Widescan type 3; 20mm 1.25" Widescan type 3; plus Sirius Optics 2" nebula filter

The conditions for this observation were very good - M44 (the Beehive) and the Double cluster were easy naked eye objects. Hints of the Milky Way could vaguely be seen running through Auriga and into Canis Minor. Orion was almost transiting the Meridian and Sirius was blazing very brightly.

It appears that there's nebulosity around all the stars in the Pleiades. Looking at the cluster as a pan and a handle with the pan on the right and handle on the left (inverted telescope image), the bottom right-hand star (with the lovely string of stars to the right of it), appears to have a 'cometry tail' patch of nebulosity. This region runs 2 o'clock, 7 o'clock.

The brightest patch of nebulosity in my view is around the upper right-hand edge of the pan - a group of four stars. In trying to discern the extent of the whispy nebulosity, taking the elongated triangle group of three stars in the centre of the pan (pointing out), with the two bright stars either side, I feel that I can see a region of triangular-shaped greyness, with the arrow of stars pointing to its apex - I cannot be sure of this - it's very difficult to judge. However, I do feel that I can see a bridge of nebulosity between the two left-hand most stars of the pan.

Changing to the 30mm 2" Widescan type 3 eyepiece, there isn't a great deal of difference, but once I concentrate quite hard, the top right-hand star of the pan the nebulosity seems to extend towards the star below it. Though it is possibly an optical effect caused by the cometry tail extending beyond the star Merope.

The two bright upper most stars of the pan and the two stars above - a spaceship-shaped blunted triangle - seem to have nebulosity embedded all around them. Looking across on the opposite side of the cluster, there even seems to be nebulosity around the two stacked handle stars. Again, I'm not too sure if this is optical trickery!

Swapping over to the 20mm 1.25" Widescan type 3, seems to really make a difference - I've definitely got more of a handle on what I'm trying to see. The patchiness of the nebulosity is much more obvious. A lovely view.

Trying to identify the regions between the nebulosity, I can see a swathe of darkness to the left of the stars on the right-hand side of the pan. Correspondingly, it appears that the largest extent of the nebula associated with the cluster is around the left-hand stars of the pan and extending North beyond the upper most star.

Having made this observation and compared my comments to existing accounts, I do feel that I have most definitely seen the elusive reflection nebulosity associated with M45.

Andrew Greenwood

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