Report - 2025-02-25

Peter Chappell- Viewing Log for 25th February 2025

I arranged a viewing session at Nebo farm, unfortunately no one from the club was free this evening, so I went ahead and had a session by myself.

I had my Meade LX90 GOTO telescope set up and ready by 19:53, for a change I used a Televue Ethos 13 mm eye piece, as this is a heavier eye piece than the Pentax one which I usually use, I had to put a second counter weight on the telescope to balance out the kit! With a temperature of 6 °C, some cloud around but had wind for company, it could turn out to be a cold session? Guide stars for the set up were Sirius and Rigel

I could not get Saturn as it had already set, so my first target was Venus for the evening, I could make out a good crescent shape to this planet, the phase is probably around a quarter showing? I tried looking for Neptune in the western sky but I also think it had set? So, next target was Uranus not far from the Pleiades open cluster (OC), I could make out a pale green colour on the surface but nothing else. Jupiter would be easy to locate, being the second brightest object in the current sky. As usual I could make out the two main weather belts and only three of the major moons, all close to each other (by line of sight) to the west of Jupiter, starting with Io, followed by Ganymede and Calisto. Europa at this time was doing a shadow transit but I could not make it out, the wobbling telescope did not help my viewing! Light time from Jupiter was 40.98 minutes. I had the same problem with Mars, bobbling around in the eye piece, hard to make out any surface details? With the planets finished I thought I would look at some deep sky objects which were now starting to enter the western sky and soon would be lost for the year. First object was Messier (M) 93, an OC in Puppis, this is a compact triangle shaped object with some bright stars in the cluster. Above and slightly to the east in Hydra is M 48, a large loose and sparse OC. By now thin cloud was starting to roll in, so my views would be limited? Off to the favourite object of the winter skies and M 42 and 43, the Great Orion nebula, the trapezium stars were good to look at and the dust lanes bright. Below Orion is Lepus and an odd ball globular cluster (GC) no other GC’s are nearby? This is M 79, a fuzzy blob to look at, did not help only being 10 ° above the horizon at this time. Back into Orion and M 78 (above the belt stars), I could make out some nebula around the two main stars of this reflection nebula. Going below the star Sirius, you come across M 41, a large sparse OC which has some bright stars in it. Final object for the evening was M 35 in Gemini, this is a large OC, full of bright stars.