Blakehill Farm Nature Reserve - Peter Chappell & Mike Partridge

Mike Partridge from Swindon Stargazers arranged a viewing session at Blakehill Nature Reserve (owned by Wiltshire Wildlife Trust) near Cricklade. This would be the first time we have used this place without a nearly full moon to spoil the sky, so it would interesting to see how different it would be from Uffcott?

I arrived at Blakehill and had my Meade LX 90 set up and ready for some viewing by 19:45, this time I would be using a Pentax 14 mm eye piece this would give me a magnification of just under 143. For this session I wanted to start a new viewing challenge, to finish the Herschel 400 list I will have to wait until the summer months as the four objects I need to tick off are in Scorpius, Ophiuchus (x2) and Virgo unless I do a late night session one day? I have covered a lot of the Messier objects but never dome them all, so I thought I would do a Messier marathon but using GOTO equipment! I know it is not in the spirit of the challenge but I know there are some I could not star hop too? So by following the classic list I should be able to get them all in about five sessions if I plan it correctly? So here goes….

Before I started the list I wanted to look at Uranus before it got too low to view, as usual all I could make out was its greenish hue thru the eye piece. The first two objects are Spiral Galaxies which I find hard to locate, these are M 77 in Cetus and M74 in Pisces both objects were faint fuzzy blobs to look at! M33, the Pinwheel Galaxy in Triangulum was a misty patch to look at. M31, the Andromeda Galaxy was good to look at, if you have good eye sight this object is the most distance you can see, personally I have never seen it without aid from at least binoculars. Nearby is M32 a dim Elliptical Galaxy and on the other side of M32 is M110 which was hard to locate for me! Into Cassiopeia and M52 and M103 these two are Open Clusters (O C) and dim to view but still my favourite deep sky object to look at. M76, the Little Dumbbell Nebula in Perseus is an object I rarely look at so it was a pleasure to see it, this Planetary Nebula has a magnitude of 11 which is about the limits for my telescope? Another O C I do not look at is M34 in Perseus, to be fair this is a constellation I never look at!

M45, the Pleiades or Seven Sisters in Taurus is an object even I can see with my eye ball (in fact this object has the greatest brightness of 1.2 in the whole Messier list of 110 objects), it is best to view with my finder scope as I look thru the O C if viewed with the eye piece. An odd ball Globular Cluster (G C) is M79 in Lepus, it should not be there as most G C’s are located towards the centre of the Milky Way galaxy? Another pair of easy Messier objects is M42 (Great Orion Nebula) and M43 normally in the same field of view? The other Messier object in Orion is M78, a Bright Nebula even though its location is easy to find (eastern end belt star and go up a bit) I have trouble finding it, maybe a filter would help? M1 (Crab Nebula) the only Supernova remnant (from 1054) on the list was a faint patch to look at. The next four objects are all O C’s and I ranked them in brightness from M37, M38, M35 and finally M36? Wonder if other viewers would put them in a different order? Their magnitudes are: 5.6 (M37), 6.4 (M38), 5.1 (M35) and 6.0 (M36). By now time was marching on and Mike wanted to lock the place up, so my final object of the evening was Jupiter with its four main moons with Calisto and Europa to the east of Jupiter and Io and Ganymede to the west. It was now 21:50 and the telescope had a nice coating of frost on the tube, with little or no wind it was a great night to get out under the stars.

As for Blakehill being better than Uffcott, yes it probably is but not much better that is only my opinion others might disagree? The only light pollution comes from Swindon to the east which is an area of sky I do not view much anyway. Time to head home and warm up with a cup of coffee before putting all of the equipment used that night into the lounge and dry overnight (this is most important) before packing it all up the following day ready for the next clear night. As I write this (24th February) we have had four clear nights on the trot, unfortunately this is around a full moon and not very good for deep sky objects!

During that session I have seen 20 of the 110 objects on his list, so hopefully I am still on track to complete all the objects in five sessions? My biggest challenge will come during the summer months when I view Scorpius and Sagittarius, these constellations do not raise much above the horizon from the UK! The lowest object is M7 which I have seen before from Uffcott so I know I can see all of them assuming the weather is on my side?

Clear skies.

Peter Chappell

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