Friday 12th November
Llyn Brenig
NELM ~6
A late start saw me hiding in the forest from the cold north wind. A few clouds passed through but generally the session from 22:00 –02:30 was clear.
I spent the first few hours using the 18". Comet 78P Grehels is visible in Aries. The expected magnitude is~11.8, however, it is currently ~1.5 magnitudes brighter. It appeared as a well formed comet!
I had previously failed to find a couple of galaxy groups inLacerta. This time I star hopped from Pegasus and found 2 interesting groupings of ellipses and spirals near NGCs 7242 and7265. These ranged from a bright 12+ to a barely detectable 15+. Off the east side of the square of Pegasus another loose grouping of15 galaxies was picked up. Centred around NGC 80 these had a similar magnitude profile.
A trawl around in Pisces found more objects. One of some interestwas NGC 676. At ~mag. 12 this edge-on spiral has a mag 10 star superimposed exactly on the central bulge!
A large wedge of cloud had me putting away the Obsession and settingup the 4" Borg refractor.
Camelopardalis…
…Kembles Cascade is a beautiful string of stars that were perfectlydisplayed in the 4 degree FOV. The nearby open clusters of NGC 1502 and Tr3 at ~mag 7 were nice. IC 342, a big local group face-on galaxy was quite difficult. In contrast the similarly bright NGC2403 was easy picking. I had a quick look around the Ursa Major Messier objects. The M81,82 combo is stunning in almost any aperture. The Owl nebula was readily seen w/o filters.
A wallow around the Orion nebulae concluded the session.
by Paul