Report - 2025-02-02

Peter Chappell- Viewing Log for 2nd February 2025

Sunday, I had a free evening and for a change, the sky was fairly clear. I put out a call for Swindon club members to do an ad hoc meeting at Nebo Farm but unfortunately no one was free. After getting permission from Phil, I had my Meade LX90 GOTO telescope set up and ready by 19:26, as usual I would be using my Pentax 14 mm eye piece.

I would also be using my Seestar S50 kit to take some pictures of deep sky objects. With a temperature of 5 °C, I thought conditions would be good but a keen wind would lower temperatures and I some thin cloud for company as well. The guide stars were Rigel and Procyon.

Recently there had been a lot of media attention about the planets lining up in the sky, what they did not tell you would need a telescope to see two of them which I will come too later. There was a lot of thin cloud to the west as I started out, my first object was Saturn but only being 3 ° high I could just about make it out, at best it was a faint fuzzy blob (FFB) which I normally refer to spiral galaxies (SG). Venus was much higher in the sky, it was now showing a brilliant bright crescent phase but unfortunately the wind was wobbling the telescope which made viewing this object hard at times. Neptune was hiding in clouds, so I went off to the next planet on view and Uranus. Best I could make out of this planet was the pale green disc on display. Off now to Jupiter, the third brightest object in the current sky after the Moon and Venus. As usual I could make out the two main weather belts and only three moons on show, on the eastern side was Europa, followed by Ganymede and Calisto, Io was in the shadow of Jupiter. The wind also made Jupiter wobble about in the eye piece. Final planet was Mars, a bright object in the eastern sky beside Castor and Pollux in Gemini, I could make out some markings on the surface. You need a telescope to look at Uranus and Neptune.
With the planets now finished I turned my attention to some Messier (M) objects starting with M 42, the Great Orion nebula and close by M 43. The dust lanes in 42 were brilliant to look at and the trapeziums stars in the middle could be clearly seen. M 43 often gets overlooked because of its wonderful neighbour next door. Above the belt stars in Orion you will find M 78, the closest reflection and emission nebula to us, all be it about 1,600 light years away! I could make out the two main stars and some nebula around them. Going higher in the sky we come to M 1, the Crab nebula in Taurus, this is the only Supernova Remnant on his list of 110 objects. I had trouble finding this object, I had to move the telescope to see it, and conditions were not too great this evening! This object was a FFB to look at. Going below Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky by about four degree’s you come across M 41, this was a large loose open cluster (OC) to look at. Going further south and slightly east you come across M 93, a dim compact OC which is about 3,400 light years away from us? On to M 50, a sparse loose OC with some dim stars. I do not think the thin clouds was helping me at all?

For a change I thought I would try out an article in the current month’s edition of Astronomy Now, the object was the constellation of Cancer, the Crab. First object was M 44, the Beehive cluster, a very large OC which is best viewed with either binoculars or in my case the finderscope. Below M 44 is M 67, a large sparse and dim OC. There were several objects I cannot find with this telescope as they are not in the hand controllers memory bank. Next object was NGC 2775, also known as Caldwell 48, this is an SG and coming in with a magnitude (Mag) of 10.2 was hard to find, finally saw it when I moved the telescopes slightly. I tried for NGC 2672/3, two galaxies which are inter acting with each other but having a Mag of 12.0 was beyond my vision, unfortunately.

By now I was starting to feel the cold, the wind had not dropped down at all, and so a quick look at Jupiter and to my delight, Io had reappeared from Jupiter’s shadow. What I was seeing had taken place 38.03 minutes beforehand, it takes light that time to get here. Final object for the evening was the Moon which now was in thin cloud but still very bright to look at. Along the terminator (day and night line) I could make out some great shadows within some of the craters on view.
It was now 20:57 and my fingers were getting cold, time to pack up and go home. One of the bad points of viewing at Nebo Farm is the lack of protection from the wind which I found out this evening.

Clear skies.

Peter Chappell