Report - 2025-03-26

Peter & Norman- Viewing Log for 26th March 2025

I put a call out to fellow members that I intended doing a viewing session at Nebo Farm later on. For a change, one member called Norman (first time visit for him and only been a member for around a month) said he was free and would join me, think this is the first time I had some one out at Nebo with me for more than two months?

After getting permission from Phil, I arrived and had my Meade LX90 set up and ready by 19:55, as usual I would be using my Pentax XW 14 mm eye piece. There was no wind with little cloud and with a temperature of 10 °C, it should be good for viewing?

While I was setting up, Norman arrived and we said hello to each other. By now I had set up the Seestar S50 and started operations with it but I had trouble with it, it could not find M 42! It said that cloud was in the way, err! Tried another object and had the same trouble?

The screen on my phone was blank, after a bit of thinking I came up with the problem, dust cap was still on the S50, doh! Talking instead of watching what I was doing was the problem. Guild stars were Capella and Procyon.

We started off looking at the planets with Uranus being the first object. Could not make out any colour on the surface, very pale to look at. Next was Jupiter which you could not miss as it was the brightest object (currently) in the sky. Going from Jupiter to the east was the moons of Io and well out, Calisto, to the west was Ganymede and Europa. The two made weather belts were also on view, the Great Red Spot was on the other side of Jupiter. Light time to Jupiter was 44.82 minutes. Final planet was Mars, still bright in the high southern skies but could not make out surface details like I could a couple of months ago.

Now on to some Messier (M) objects starting with M 42, the Great Orion nebula and its close friend M 43 nearby. The dust lanes were dim (M 42 now setting into the twilight western sky) but the Trapezium stars were still noticeable. Off for some open clusters (OC) starting with M 41, about 4 degrees below Sirius in Canis Major, this cluster is large but the stars are sparse and dim to look at. Now off to Auriga and M 38, another large OC with lots of dim stars. Not far away is M 37, again another large OC with more stars than M 37. By now Norman decided it was time for him to go home as he had work in the morning, a lot of the time we had been talking about various subjects and looking at some of his pictures he had taken, he did not bring a telescope with him.
This visit was more of a recce to see what was here, hopefully next time he will bring a telescope along with him. Now I had the place to myself, I decided I would have a go at Leo starting with M 96, this spiral galaxy (SG) was a fuzzy blob (FB) but had a hint of a core, it’s magnitude (Mag) was 9.1, not far away is M 95, this SG seemed fainter to me, (comes in a Mag of 9.6), so to me it was a faint fuzzy blob (FFB).
Also close by is M 105, this time an Elliptical galaxy (EG) shining at 9.1, I thought I could make out another galaxy just below M 105, so I put the Seestar onto this object and waited to see what picture came up. Indeed there was actually two galaxies the S50 picked up, to the east was NGC 3384, an EG coming in with a Mag of 10.0 (about my limit with this telescope) and NGC 3389, a Lenticular galaxy with a Mag of 12.4 (which I could not see, need a telescope of at least 10 inches, my Meade is an 8 inch). Off to the tail of Leo and M 65, a SG with a Mag of 9.3, this is a FFB to me. You can also have M 66 within the same field of view of the eye piece as M 65, to me M 66 is brighter, turns out to have a Mag of 9.0, again another SG.