Tales from our monthly observation session at Win Green on Saturday 1 March 2025.
The weather deities finally smiled upon us for our monthly, planned observation evening on Saturday, so we gathered at Win Green with our varying array of technology to view the stunning night sky. We almost filled the car park with members, visitors and general pop-alongers, which was lovely to be part of.
Gareth reported on our Discord server his list of highlights, ranging from the Eskimo NGC2392NGC numbers are listed in ‘The New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars’, compiled in late 19th Century by John Louis Emil Dreyer using previous publications and lists. planetary nebula and the Bodes M81 and M82M numbers are Messier objects. There’s 110 (up from the original 103) of them and Charles Messier compiled this list of ‘fuzzy’ bodies while he was comet hunting in 1781. There is now an Astronomy challenge of the same name, where astronomers attempt to find all objects in one night. galaxy pairing. The Bodes galaxy lined up well with Gareth’s new (to him) 17mm Hyperion. Later on, they managed to view the double cluster with 300mm mirror and Colin’s new 21mm Ethos – apparently like looking through the window of a space ship. Sounds fun, shame I missed that one.
Colin says there were some good NGC objects about and believes they may have spotted the fainter NGC2916 galaxy while also viewing the NGC 2903 among others.
Helping out with Ania’s telescope and viewing and showing others the wonders of the night sky with their telescopes and binoculars was a big hit. The ‘wow’ factor was quite high throughout the car park.
Jupiter was showing off through Neil’s telescope and its ‘ridiculously’ high 300x plus magnification, allowing the detail on the bands to be seen rotating around and the moons as discs, rather than the usual spots of light. Again, one I missed out on but would have loved to have seen.
Unfortunately, Colin had some issues collimating his new hand-built (by Rod) Dobsonian telescope which was frustrating for all but this was a minor set back to the evening, especially as it is now fixed and working well. Sometimes some daylight is what’s needed.
Myself, I used some small(ish) binoculars inherited from my father-in-law. I found the Orion nebula with the binoculars and spent a good amount of time just ‘wow’ing to myself. Although only there for about an hour due to getting very cold feet – note to self: listen to voice in my head that says to put on your hiking socks! – but Rod kindly showed me M81 and M82, two galaxies in one eye piece, as well as Mars and Venus, Jupiter and Pleiades. I had to marvel, as always, at the speed at which Rod can find the usual suspects, galaxies and nebulae.
As with every other observation session we’ve had as a club, I went home buzzing with excitement at what I had seen, amazed about the distances and time covered to see these objects.
Everyone else stayed until just after 10pm and general chatter on the Discord server is that everyone had a great evening’s viewing. It’s almost as if the weather getting in the way the last two attempts was in order to give us this wonderful session.
A big thank you from me and the many members who enjoyed the night to the guys sharing their knowledge and expertise. How many more nights are we going to enjoy with the current sunshine during the day and clear evenings, I wonder.
Jo WB
Source for the NGC and M descriptions:
Raymond Shubinski, Contributing Editor of Astronomy.com
https://www.astronomy.com/astronomy-for-beginners/what-are-ngc-objects/
Published: 3 September 2024>