Report - 2026-02-24

24th February 2026 @ Nebo Farm

Peter Chappell -

With a promise of finally some clear skies in the evening, I decided to give a call out to fellow members to see who would be interested in a viewing session at Nebo farm later on. Several people showed an interested in coming along later in the day. I got permission from Phil, so we could a session at his farm. After I had finished playing golf down near Andover with bright sunshine for company, I made my way home, after tea I loaded the car up with astronomy gear and off I went to Nebo Farm.
When I arrived around 18:50, Norman was already there and had his gear set up and taking pictures around the constellation of Orion. Looking back thru my notes, the last time I had been out viewing was back in December, I do not think I have such a long layoff from doing a viewing session ever? This would be the first for 2026, around eight weeks into the New Year! While setting up my Meade LX90, both Rob and Damian arrived, Damian would only be using his Seestar S50 as all his gear had been sent out to Poland as he would soon be leaving us. Rob would be trying out his Meade LX10 which he had been getting to working again after such a long time not being used. At 19:06, both my S50 and LX90 were ready, as usual I would be using my Pentax XW 14 mm eye piece. The temperature was around 10 °C but we had a strong wind to deal with coming from the south which knocked the temperature down a few degrees. The guide stars were Rigel and Procyon.

Recently on Facebook they had been a lot of stories going around about the six planetary alignment on the 28th of February. Looking at Stellarium (a very good planetarium app to use), Mercury was on the horizon, not really visible, Venus had set. So first target was Saturn, only 7 ° up from the horizon (too low really for visual looking), I had trouble getting the ‘ringed’ planet into focus, the wind was also knocking the telescope which made Saturn jump around a lot. Norman said Neptune was close to Saturn but to me was lost in the twilight sky? So hopefully I would have better luck with Uranus as it was a lot higher in the sky but unfortunately it was fairly close to the waxing gibbous moon! I did find Uranus but like Saturn is was bouncing around in the eye piece, so nothing to be said about this planet. Had a bit of better luck with Jupiter as it was higher in the sky in the constellation of Gemini and a lot brighter, only the moon was brighter in this sky. I could make out the two main weather belts with the moons of Ganymede and Calisto out to the east of Jupiter and (fairly close to Jupiter) was Io and Europa. The Great Red Spot was hiding on the other side of Jupiter. Again trying to have a good look at Jupiter was impossible due to the wind! Light time from Jupiter was 37.86 minutes. With the planets finished, I had a look at some open clusters (OC), starting with Messier (M) 50 in constellation of Monoceros, this OC was dim and sparse to look at but did have some bright stars within this cluster. Onto M 47 in Puppis, this is a large OC with some bright stars. Onto an oddball globular cluster (GC) in Lepus in M 79 (there are not many GC nearby), this was a fuzzy blob (FB) to view, could not make out any core at all, the phase of the moon did not help (more about that later on in the report). Into Canis Major and about four degrees below Sirius is M 41, a large and loose cluster. Going further south and back into Puppis you come across M 93, an often overlooked OC, this was a compact and dim cluster to look at. Quick swing around to Ursa Major and M 81, known as Bode’s galaxy, just a FB to look at! Final object for the evening was the moon, shining in at a magnitude of -10.12, it was washing a lot of deep sky objects out of the sky and the strong wind did not help which had now picked up a bit. The moon was 54.2 lit or 7.38 days old and casting a nice shadow on the ground. Along the terminator (day/night line on the surface of the moon) some nice craters were coming into view, in the Sea of Showers (Mare Imbrium) was the crater Archimedes (50 miles across), further south was the crater Purbach (71 miles across) to name a couple. Looking at the moon even with a moon filter attached finished my eye off.

The time was now 21:07 and time to pack up and go home, Norman was the first to leave about 30 minutes earlier with Damian soon afterwards. By the time Rob and put his gear away, I had decided to pack up, there was a lot of dew on the gear I used tonight and would need drying properly once home.
The conditions this evening were not that good, the moon was past half phase (normally I would not come out until this late in the monthly cycle) but as this was the first time I managed to get out, I would have to put up with the conditions and the moon. The temperature was still around 10 °C when I left.
While I was viewing the sky, the S50 had been taking pictures of M 81, M 82 and M 97 in Ursa Major, away from the glare of the moon!

Norman's report and images

Some time back I managed to get a good deal on a 35mm focal length F0.95 lens. I figured this would be good to try and take some wide angle Astro images with.

I did some initial tests from home with quite good results, so I was interested in trying it in the ‘darker skies’ at Nebo. I realised the moon would lessen any results but it was still a good test to see what it could achieve there.

As I had a nice picture of Orion taken from home, so I used this as a test at Nebo for comparison, the tests proved that the lens does see better at Nebo even with the moon visible, I’m trying to see if I can stack the Nebo images to see if I can get any nebulosity from the images.

I intend to run more tests in the future, I’d like to see if I can take a milky way picture with that lens in the future when conditions permit.

I also ran my Insta360 X4 in ‘star lapse’ mode to see how that compared to from home.