Peter Chappell- Viewing Log for 9th January 2024

This was going to be my first viewing session of 2024, hopefully with many more to follow?
I had put out a call out on the Swindon Stargazers ad hoc WhatsApp viewing group, only Hilary Wilkey was able to meet up with me. We arranged to meet at Nebo farm (after I had got permission from the land owner) for around 19:00. I was the first to arrive and was met by a brutal and strong wind which really felt cold, air temperature was 0 °C but felt well below with the wind chill. Hilary arrived within a couple of minutes and after a quick chat we decided to travel to Uffcott to see if there was better shelter there from the strong wind. As it was, the hedge to the north did filter some of the wind out, so we decided to set up camp here. By 19:20, I had my Meade LX90 telescope with a 14 mm Pentax eye piece set up and ready, the strong wind might bounce the scope around a bit but we would find out later on. The guide stars for the set up were Capella and Rigel.

My first target was Saturn, now getting very low in the western sky and well past its best, it turned out to be only 8 ° above the horizon, as usual I could make out the rings of the planet and the moon Titan out to the west. Off to Jupiter and this is where I noticed the telescope bouncing around a bit by the wind, the brighter the object the more bounce I would notice. I could make out the two main weather belts with three moons out to the west (from Jupiter it was Io, Ganymede and Callisto) with Europa out to the east. Managed to find Neptune this time, it was in the finderscope just a case of manually slewing the telescope to the right object (first one I choose, lucky me!), could make no detail out of this planet. This is when the only car came pass us all evening, after the car had gone I went off to Uranus, could make some blue or green colour on this planet? One Messier (M) object I do not see very often is M79 sitting below Orion in Lupus (the Hare), as it had cleared the hedge I went off to find it, this globular cluster was a fuzzy blob to look at, did not help being so low in the sky. Next object was M1, the only Supernova remnant in his list, this object was a large grey blob to look at. Following on from this was M41 sitting about 4 ° below the star Sirius, this open cluster was large and sparse to look at. Final object for the evening was one of my all-time favourites and M42, as usual this object was great to look at. While I was looking at these objects, Hilary was using a three inch refractor on a manual mount and picking up new objects for her. I did help her at times using my laser pen to direct her to the general location for some objects.
The time was now 20:13 and we were both getting cold (temperature had not dropped, it was just the strength of the wind), so we decided to pack up and go home as both of us were getting cold, at least there was no dew on the telescope, so I would not need to dry any used equipment off overnight.

Clear skies.

Peter Chappell