Report - 2025-03-05

Peter Chappell- Viewing Log for 5th March 2025

I put out a call to fellow members of the club but no one was free this evening, so I would be doing another viewing session by myself! As usual I got permission from Phil and had my Meade LX90 telescope set up and ready by 19:31 at Nebo farm, tonight I would be using my Pentax 14 mm eye piece.
Temperature was 7 °C but I had a keen wind for company which would knock the temperature down a bit. Guide stars were Rigel and Sirius.

While driving to this site I noticed Mercury shining low down in the western sky, by the time I was ready to go it was hiding behind some trees! So off to Venus (not missed this time), it had a real smiley crescent face probably about an eighth phase left?

While I was looking at Uranus, I noticed some of my view was blocked by a black mark? Turns out the dew shield was not sat correctly on the end of the telescope and was stopping some light from getting to my eye, after an adjustment of the dew shield, everything was okay.

I could not make out any colour on the disc of Uranus, did not help being close to a nearly half phase moon!

The moon would not trouble the viewing of Jupiter as it is still very bright, I could make out the two main weather belts and only three of the moons, one which turn out to be Io was just above Jupiter with Europa and Ganymede out to the west. Calisto was in the shadow of Jupiter, the wind did not help trying to view Jupiter, either! Light time was 42.07 minutes, Jupiter is starting to pull away from the Earth recently. Had the same problems with Mars, the wind was bobbling the telescope around a lot!

Thought I would go back to Messier (M) 79 as it would soon be lost in the western sky, this globular cluster was a fuzzy blob to look at with a hint of a dim core. Off to M 42 and 43, as usual the dust lanes were bright to look at. All I could make out of M 78 was the two main stars and no nebula, some of the moon light was entering the dew shield which would not help me at this object.

This year’s challenge with the club was to image any Caldwell (C) objects, this is a list done by Patrick Moore as an alternate to the Messier list. I looked at the list and was looking for objects going into the western sky. First object I went to was C 64, an open cluster (OC) in Canis Major, this had one bright star near it’s centre and a lot of dim stars around it looking like a triangle, probably did not help being at -25 ° declination?

Not far away is C 58, another OC but slightly higher at – 15 °, this OC is large and dim to look at. By now Leo had gained some height in the sky, so I tried for M 96, this is a Spiral galaxy (SG) and a faint fuzzy blob (FFB) to look at, comes in with a Mag of 9.1. Not far away is M 95 but I am not sure if I found it, being Mag 9.6 it might have been washed out by the present of the moon?

Also tried for M 105, an Elliptical galaxy, same result even though it was as bright was M 96. Final object was the moon which was making shadows on the ground, the line of the terminator showed up a lot of craters but the bobbling telescope did not help. While viewing the moon, the dew shield came off with the strong wind!

The time was now 21:05, as the wind had picked up and I was starting to feel rather cold, time to pack up and go home, end temperature had only dropped to 6 °C which is really good but the wind, another story!

Clear skies.

Peter Chappell

PS, this was my four viewing session in nine days which for me is probably a record, I also did one with Wiltshire AS on the 28th at Lacock which had a good turnout of people looking at the skies.