More Double Stars in Ursa Minor

I have already done a little bit of double star hunting in Ursa Minor but on the last night out in my back garden I decided to go back and see a couple of others. I like looking at targets in Ursa Minor because it is pretty much always visible from my back garden and is high enough to avoid a fair chunk of the local light pollution.

An interesting thing I noted about these two stars I chose to look at tonight was that both have Struve in their name but one was coded as STTA and the other as STF which is the code I have seen before. I therefore did a bit of research and discovered that the reason for the different codes is that a fair amount of the Struve family have been involved in astronomy and here seems to be several double star catalogues related to them! Therefore if you try and look up Struve 143 you would find out that there is three of them, STF 143, STT 143 and STTA 143! 

Anyway, I have decided that for any star that I find with the Struve moniker I am just going to use the coded name from now on. So the stars I looked at tonight were STTA 143 and STF 1798 whose locations are shown in the image below.

STTA 143 (HIP 78761 / SAO 8415)
RA : 16 04 48.95   Dec: +70 15 42.0
Magnitudes: 6.9, 8.8
Separation: 46.6”
Position Angle: 83°

STTA 143 was my first target of the night which I found relatively easily with my GOTO handset. The reasonable magnitudes and wide separation distance of the A & B components meant it was a pretty obvious split to see. As for colour, well both stars looked white to me which ties in with the spectral classifications of A0 & F8. I was quite happy to see that they did match what I was seeing as I was beginning to wonder if I was maybe just missing colour when observing.

STF 1798 (HIP 67959 / SAO 7912)
RA : 13 55 02.30   Dec: +78 23 59.2
Magnitudes: 7.7, 9.7
Separation: 7.6”
Position Angle: 11°

Finding STF 1798 was actually the first real challenge in my astronomy adventure because my GOTO handset didn't have the SAO number in its database. I therefore had to use the Right Ascension and Declination to point my telescope in the right area and then use a print out from stellarium to actually centre in on STF 1798. It was actually quite fun to do as it felt like I was really working to find the star for once and I felt a sense of achievement when I did find it.

In regards to the star itself, it was slightly dimmer than STTA 143 and the separation was much smaller, in fact it was smaller than the separation in any other star I had successfully split so far. This meant that the B component was very close to the brighter A component and at times was lost it the glare. I could make it out most of the time although I was not sure of the colour as it was washed out by the white of the A Component with its F2 stellar classification.

Overall, STF 1798 was probably my favourite star of the night because of the extra challenge in finding it and due to the fact that it is smallest separation value I have split so far. I must have spent about 20 minutes just gazing through the eyepiece watching the component appear and disappear in the glare as atmospheric conditions changed.

Canes Venatici Messier Hunting

The 23rd of March was a lovely clear and cold night so I couldn’t resist heading along to Harperrig where I met up with 4 other people from the Central Scotland Observers Group. I turned up without a plan but very soon I decided that with the lack of a moon I would try and at least tackle all the Messier objects in a constellation. My constellation of choice was Canes Venatici and I can happily say that it was a complete success with me managing to see all 5 Messier objects there. In additional I also bagged a Caldwell object, an interesting star called La Superba and a further galaxy that isn’t in the Caldwell or Messier lists but is one of the Herhsel 400 objects. You can see the location of all the objects I saw in the image below.

For those of you unaware of Canes Venatici I shall give you all a little background information. It was created in the 17th Century by Johannes Hevelius out of some faint stars which up until then had been included within Ursa Major and its name in Latin means "hunting dogs". The constellation is often depicted in illustrations as representing the dogs of Boötes the Herdsman, a neighbouring constellation to the east. Its other neighbouring constellations are Coma Berenices, and Ursa Major.

So now that I have dispensed with that bit of trivia I will get down to the nitty gritty of explaining what I saw!

Messier 3
RA: 13 42 11.62 Dec: +28 22 38.2
Type: Globular Star Cluster
Magnitude: 6.2

I had actually previously looked at this DSO before and on the whole it had looked like a prominent blurry cloud of light. With it being a bit darker tonight I was hoping to maybe see a bit more. What I saw was a much brighter and clearer patch of light in the sky but I still found it hard to resolve any specific stars in the cluster without using averted vision. I don’t know if maybe this is the best I can get visually with my telescope or if I need to just spend more time observing the cluster to get more out of it.

It is still quite an amazing object to look at anyway and I am sure I will be back again in the future.

Messier 51 / Whirlpool Galaxy (+ Companion Galaxy NGC 5195)
RA: 13 29 52.7 Dec: +47 11 43
Type: Spiral Galaxy
Magnitude: 8.4 (NGC 5195 - 10.5)

The Whirlpool Galaxy is a spiral galaxy estimated to be approximately 23 million light-years away from the Milky Way. An interesting aspect of Messier 51 is that it has a companion galaxy known as NGC 5195 that it is actually interacting with.

To be honest, I have actually tried to see this galaxy a few times from the back garden but have never managed to see it so I was very happy when I finally managed to spot it. In addition, I even managed to see the companion galaxy which I wasn’t actually expecting to see.

Whilst I struggled to see any of the spiral arms via my 127 MAK I did get the chance to look at it through a 12 inch Dobsonian scope which did show up some of the spiral structure. It was still a nice enough sight in my own scope and with averted vision it is possible I might be able to pick out some more of the galactic structure in my own telescope.

Messier 63 / Sunflower Galaxy
RA: 13 15 49.3 Dec: +42 01 45
Type: Spiral Galaxy
Magnitude: 9.3

The Sunflower Galaxy is a spiral galaxy estimated to be approximately 37 million light-years away from the Milky Way. Supposedly the spiral arms are meant to resemble the petals of a flower which explains the name but to be honest I couldn’t make out much structure at all in this galaxy so I have no idea if it is true. In fact at times I could barely even make out the core and so averted vision was my saviour as it did help make it more obvious. To be honest this galaxy was probably the hardest to see out of everything I looked at during my tour of Canes Venatici.

Messier 94
RA: 12 50 53.1 Dec: +41 07 14
Type: Spiral Galaxy
Magnitude: 9.0

Messier 94 is another spiral galaxy, but this one is estimated to be approximately 19 million light-years away from the Milky Way. What I noticed about this galaxy was that it has quite an obvious bright core that I could see without any issues. However, once I moved away from the core I didn’t really pick up any sort of structure at all. It was like the bright core was overpowering everything else which resulted in this galaxy looking more like a globular cluster than a galaxy.

Messier 106
RA: 12 18 57.5 Dec: +47 18 14
Type: Spiral Galaxy
Magnitude: 9.1

My final Messier target of the evening and unsurprisingly based on what I had seen so far it was another spiral galaxy! Anyway The Messier 106 is estimated to be approximately 23 million light-years away from the Milky Way. The view in the eyepiece was quite nice with a central core being clearly surrounded by a dim halo.

Caldwell 21
RA: 12 28 11.9 Dec: +44 05 40
Type: Irregular Galaxy
Magnitude: 10.0

The one Caldwell I viewed actually turned out to be an irregular galaxy which was nice considering I was beginning to suffer from spiral galaxy overload by the time I looked at it. The galaxy is estimated to be approximately 12 million light-years away from the Milky Way and it was therefore the closest galaxy I viewed during my observing session.

When I looked at this galaxy it was obviously different to the spirals I had already seen as it had an obvious box like shape. I actually enjoyed seeing this because it did look different and I think in the future I will try and study this more along with all the other Caldwell objects in Canes Venatici.

La Superba (HIP 62223 / SAO 44317)
RA: 12 28 11.9 Dec: +44 05 40
Magnitude: 4.8 - 6.3

I decided to take a look at the star called La Superba because its rather interesting name caught my attention. The name actually comes from a 19th century astronomer called Angelo Secchi who was hugely impressed with the beauty of the star. The star is a giant red "carbon star" which means it has started to fuse helium into carbon and it is this process that results in a strong red colour. Another interesting aspect is that it is also a semi-regular variable star, peaking at about +4.8 mag and diminishing to around +6.3 over a 160 day cycle.

Even though this star is supposedly one of the reddest in the night sky it still looked reasonably orange to me and I am not sure it was that much more vivid a colour that Betelgeuse. It is possible that it was at a dim stage in its variability and this dulled the colour slightly but I can't say I was as impressed I had hoped to be. In the end it was still a nice colourful star to look at when you compare it to the vast quantity of white stars around but I will need to check it out in the future just to see if I can notice any change due to its varying magnitude.

Overall, I am happy that I managed to see all the Messier objects at times I think I was rushing through them so I could fit everything into the observing period. I think in the future I may try and look back over some of these galaxies and see if I can pick out any more structure by really studying them although I think my telescope aperture is always going to limit me to some extent.

Cloudy Night Fun - Robotic Telescopes

So the skies continue on the whole to be rather cloudy and my telescope sits sadly in the cupboard unused. However, thanks to Sky at Night magazine I became aware of the opportunity to use robotic telescopes for Deep Space Object imaging purposes. Deep Space Object imaging is something I would like to do in the future but the cost of buying a decent set up means it is likely to be a couple of years away before I can sit outside in the back garden myself taking photographs.

The site I decided to try was itelescope.net which does cost money to use but there is a free trial package that at gets you in to the site and enables you to take a few photographs. What I liked about this site is that one of the telescopes I could use on the free trial was in Australia meaning I had the chance to get some images of Southern Hemisphere DSOs which I would never probably see even if I do get an imaging set up in the future. The trial is fairly limited in that it only allows you to take one shot images from a selection of targets and it doesn't give you access to the RAW files but it did give me an idea of what you can do. From reading the site if you sign up for one of the paid packages you can get much more control over how you conduct your imaging.

Anyway due to the trial packaged I was pretty much limited to picking only two targets from the Southern Hemisphere and so I decided that I would go for the Eta Carinae Nebula (Caldwell 92/NGC 3372) & Eight Burst Nebula (Caldwell 74/NGC 3132). The system limited me to a single 10 minute exposure using a Takahashi SKY90 telescope & a SBIG ST-2000XMC CCD camera and so that is what I used. The initial JPG provided looked a bit crap to be honest so I ended up trying to process the FITS file that was I able to get from the itelescope.net ftp server. After a couple of hours in Photoshop I managed to produce the two images you see below and I am reasonably happy with them considering I was limited to a single shot although I suspect a more experienced person could get more out of the image.

So first up is Eta Carinae Nebula (Caldwell 92/NGC 3372) which sits in the Carinae Constellation. This nebula is actually four times as large as the Orion Nebula but its location in the Southern Skies means it isn't as well known to those of us in the North. I think I managed to get a fair amount of detail out of this image although there may be a little bit of over exposure in the core regions due to me trying to tease out some of the dimmer clouds.

Next up was the Eight Burst Nebula (Caldwell 74/NGC 3132) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Vela. To be honest you can probably see from the image that a Wide Field image wasn't really the best for trying to capture this rather small target. It was still nice enough to play around in Photoshop with however as I tried to find a way to try and stop the central star overpowering the image.

Overall I found it nice to have the change to take some DSO images but I can't say it felt like I was actually doing anything. The feature disabled trial on itelescope.net just made it feel like I was clicking a button and that was it. I am not sure the images I obtained meant much more to me that just typing the objects name in Google and seeing them there. I suppose it did provide a little bit of fun for a couple of hours and it did enable me to practice some image editing in Photoshop but I really am not sure it would interest me much in the long term.  It is possible that using a fully enabled itelescope.net might have meant more to me as it would enable me to image southern DSOs with much more control but for now I am a little bit too cheap to use it.

As an additional note, I also played around with the website Imaging with Nasa which is completely free to use. To be honest due to it being free it was a little bit limited it what I could do and you have to sit in a queue of requests. I am actually still waiting on my images to come out of the site and it felt even less involved than itelescope.net.

Imaging Jupiter - 12th March 2014

On the 11th and 12th of March there were some very clear nights and whilst a lot of the Central Scotland Observers Group headed out to the dark site at Harperrig Reservoir I was unable to go as my wife made me go to the gym! Therefore I decided that on the 12th once I got home at 9pm I would just set up my telescope in the back garden and try and get some images of Jupiter as it was high in the sky.

Now I have taken images of Jupiter in the past and they were okay but I was sure I could manage something better so I got my Xbox Webcam and sat there for about 15 minutes playing with the settings on my capture software which is called Sharpcap.

 My first attempt was just to get a nice picture and try and get some of the moons to show up so I just plugged the webcam directly into the telescope and managed to get about 1000 frames in 2 minutes. The reason I limited it to 2 minutes is that Jupiter rotates so quickly that after that you can begin to get issues when you stack the frames due to the rotation of the planet. So after stacking and editing in some more free astronomy software called Registax I managed to achieve the following:

As you can see I managed to get some lovely banding colour and also picked up three of the Galilean moons which were from left to right, Callisto, Io & Ganymede. From what I can see in Stellarium it turns out that the forth Galilean moon of Europa was actually transiting across the face of the planet but I couldn't pick that out.

So after this success I decided to try and use my 2x Barlow Lens which would double the magnification. My last attempt at using the Barlow produced a nice image but I failed to pick up any colour so this time I was determined that by fiddling some more with Sharpcap I could get something to show up.

Once again I got some success in that I managed to get colour in the banding although I have to admit the focus wasn't perfect. I struggled to get the focus right at this magnification because my 127 Mak isn't the best when it comes to the focus mechanism. Basically, it isn't what you would call light touch and using it causes the whole telescope to shake which isn't helpful when you are up at high magnifications. In the end I am happy enough and I will just need to keep playing around in the future in an attempt to improve it.

Overall I managed to achieve what I planned to do in that I got some images of Jupiter that were better than what I had previously managed. I still think there is more to be achieved from this set up and hopefully I can get better as I use the webcam and software more. What I would really like to do in the future is try and capture one of the moon shadow transits but I need this to happen when the sky is clear and when I am allowed to skip the gym!!

Hazy Cloud & Moonlight - 10th March 2014

On the night of 10th March 2014 the night was clear and I decided to head along to Harperrig Reservoir. The reason is that this is normally a darker location than my back garden and I hoped I might be able to make out a few double stars I had failed to see previously. If anyone is interested I have put a map of Harperrig’s location below which will show where it is in relation to Edinburgh and Livingston.

Unfortunately a few things conspired to mean that I found it hard to see dim objects. The first of which was the moon which was high and bright, whilst the moon is a wonderful sight to see it isn’t conducive to seeing dim objects as it rather bright. In addition, the hazy cloud that was present was providing a brilliant medium for the moonlight to reflect off. This meant that even when I was looking away from the moon everything still looked a bit washed out.

However, I was not one to let this stop me attempting to look at a few things which I will detail below:

Messier 3
RA: 13 42 11.62 Dec: +28 22 38.2
Type: Globular Star Cluster
Magnitude: 6.2

The first object I looked at was Messier 3 which is a Globular Star Cluster located in Canes Venatici. This cluster is massive as is made up of around 500,000 stars which makes it one of the largest and brightest. Unfortunately as I looked at it the cluster was very low on the horizon and with the added light pollution from the moon it meant that I struggled to actually resolve any individual stars in the cluster. It basically looked like a very prominent blurry cloud of light reminiscent of the various galaxies I have looked at.

With a bit of averted vision I think I could make out some stars in the cluster but overall, I think I need to take another look at this DSO when it is darker.

Messier 40 / Winnecke 4 (SAO 28353)
RA: 12 22 12.53 Dec: +58 04 58.6
Type: Double Star
Magnitudes: 9.7, 10.2
Separation: 53.2”
Position Angle: 76°

My next target was Messier 40 which is a double star also known as Winnecke 4 which sits in Ursa Major. The interesting thing about this star is that this was discovered by Charles Messier when he was actually searching for a nebula. However, he couldn’t find a nebula so he just catalogued this double star instead.

To be honest I didn’t find it to be a very interesting double star in its own right and the moonlight actually made it quite difficult to make out both components. The funny thing personally is that the haze and moonlight actually gave the stars a nebulous look which is rather ironic when you consider what Messier had actually been looking for when he catalogued this star.

Cor Caroli / Alpha Canum Venaticorum / Struve 1692 (HIP 63125 / SAO 63257)
RA: 12 56 01.67 Dec: +38 19 06.2
Type: Double Star
Magnitudes: 2.9, 5.5
Separation: 19.2”
Position Angle: 229°

So my final new site of the night via my own telescope was Cor Caroli, the brightest star in the constellation Canes Venatici. The name Cor Caroli means “Charles’ Heart” and it was named this in the 17th Century to honour the executed King Charles I of England and Scotland.

This is quite an easy double to split and see with my telescope although both stars appeared white. Supposedly I may have also been able to see another fainter double in the same region as this star called Struve 1702 but alas I didn’t have this information with me at the time I was looking in the area so didn’t do a search.

If anyone is interested in the locations of the three objects detailed above then just take a gander at the image below taken from Stellarium.

Besides the three new targets I also took a view of various other objects I have seen before such as the Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31), Cigar Galaxy (Messier 82), Bode’s Galaxy (Messier 81), Almach, Betelgeuse, Mizar, Pleiades (Messier 45), Jupiter & the Moon.

One nice bonus from being at Harperrig was another member of the Central Scotland Observers Group was present with his 12 Inch Dobsonian telescope and he let me have a quick look through it at a few interesting sites. I got to get a glimpse at the leo triplets which is a small group of galaxies in the constellation of leo although I could only make out two galaxies in the eye piece. I then also got to look at the Christmas Tree Cluster in Monoceros and the Double Cluster in Perseus. I thought that both of these clusters looked stunning and I will need to look at them through my own telescope in the future.

My final sight of the night was a lovely star through the 12 Inch Dobsonian which is called Mu Cephei or more commonly as Herschel’s Garnet Star. As you can imagine by the name, the star appears garnet red and there was no doubt that it really has a very distinctive colour. It was a lovely way to finish the night and I am curious to know how vivid the colour would be without the moon light affecting the viewing. Now I know it exists I will need to make sure I take another look in the future.

Almach - An Amazing Alignment Star

Every time I set up my telescope I need to go through an alignment procedure so that the SynScan GOTO handset knows where it located and where it is pointing. Most of the time I just pick a couple of stars I know and quickly fly through the alignment procedure so I can get onto looking at the things I really want to. However, recently I used a star called Almach to align and I was pleasantly surprised to notice it was a double star when I centred it in my field of view.

This in itself isn't that special, but what was amazing was how fantastic the double actually looked due to the yellow primary and blue secondary stars. Anyway, as it looked so pretty I decided that this time I would not just move onto my observing plan and would instead take a closer look at Almach.

Gamma Andromedae / Almach / Struve 205 (HIP 9640/ SAO 37734)
RA : 02 03 53.92   Dec : +42 19 47.5
Magnitudes: 2.3, 5.0
Separation: 9.8”
Position Angle: 64°

So as I had aligned the scope with a 25mm Eyepiece I swapped to the 8mm BST Eyepiece so that I could really see the separation of the two components. What had looked like a nice star in the 25mm because stunning in the 8mm, I had some really clear separation and the colours were striking. This was a double I knew I had to sketch and notated the colours in the margins.. if you are interested the yellow was recorded as "bathroom yellow" because it reminded me of the paint on our bathroom walls.

I am still not sure I am doing it justice with my artistic skills but if you compare that with some of the other sketches I have done for double stars I think it is quite clearly stunning in comparison. To be honest, I am curious to know how stars like this would appear with a proper astrophotography set up.

Some Double Stars in Ursa Minor

So as was discussed in my last post, on the 28th February 2014 I decided to try and tackle a few double stars within the constellation of Ursa Minor. I looked at six different stars and succeeded in splitting four of them into some of their component stars. I basically managed to split Struve 1840, Struve 1841, Pi-1 Ursae Minoris & h2682. In the image below I have highlighted where in the constellations these stars are located.

In regards to the two failures, the first was 5 Ursae Minoris and whilst I saw the 4.3 magnitude primary burning brightly I just seemed unable to locate the dimmer 9.9 magnitude component even though it should be possible for my telescope. I will probably tackle it again in the future from a darker site as there was a fair bit of light pollution from my neighbours' homes by the time I tackled this star.

The other star I failed to split was Hu908 which at a separation of only 1.5 arc-seconds was always going to be a struggle for me to manage with my telescope. Bumping the magnification to try and split it resulted in my view being far too unstable so I gave up on this one very quickly. I suspect to have any chance I am going to need a super stable night and possibly a better mount if not another telescope.

And now that we have dealt with my failures of the night let us move on to the successes!

Struve 1840 (HIP 70041 / SAO 16342) 
RA : 14 19 54.86   Dec: +67 46 56.9
Magnitudes: 7.0, 10.1
Separation: 27.3”
Position Angle: 222°

Struve 1841 (HIP 70141 / SAO 16352)
RA : 14 21 07.78   Dec: +67 48 10.4
Magnitudes: 7.3, 11.1
Separation: 34.9”
Position Angle: 265°

Struve 1840 and 1841 are two stars I had tried to target previously but the weather and an annoying security light had caused me issues. So these were the first doubles I targeted, the main reason was that I thought it would be nice to see both of them in the same field of view which I managed quite easily. However, even without the neighbours security lights and a lack of rain I still struggled to make out the two dimmer companion stars and had to employ averted vision techniques to enable me to catch the odd sight of them. Both these doubles just came out as white which seems to be a common comment around the internet so I don't think I was missing anything spectacular on the colour front. To be honest both Struve 1840 and 1841 are very similar looking to each with only the only obvious difference being the minor variation in position angles.

Pi-1 Ursae Minoris / Struve 1972 (HIP 75809 & 75829 / SAO 2556 & 2558) 
RA : 15 29 11.19   Dec: +80 26 55.0
Magnitudes: 6.6, 7.3, 11.4
Separation: 31.4”, 152.3”
Position Angle: 79°, 105°

This is probably one the easiest stars I had to split this evening, mainly because the A & B components had a decent separation and were quite bright. I did struggle on for about 5-10 minutes to try and see the 11.4 C component but I just couldn't catch a glimpse of it which was a shame as I was hoping I might be able to see it. The nice thing about this double is that I actually saw a little bit a colour here, both stars had a faint yellow tinge which you can hopefully make out in the sketch below.

I highlighted HIP 75874 & HIP 76450 in the sketch because they actually make a nice triangle with Pi-1 UMi which helps confirm you are actually in the right location.

h2682 (HIP 66728 / SAO 7867) 
RA : 13 40 40.82   Dec: +76 50 37.6
Magnitudes: 6.7, 10.3, 9.2
Separation: 25.8”, 43.8”
Position Angle: 282°, 317°

My final successful double of the night was actual a triple star and I actually managed to make out all three components which made this my favourite of the night. It wasn't that easy as the magnitude 10.3 B component seemed determined to hide itself from me, but patience and some averted vision helped to tease it out of the darkness. The three components actually produce a nice little squashed triangle at the heart of the eyepiece and whilst I wasn't able to tease out any colours I have read reports of yellow, blue and violet being used to describe the different components. I would have loved to see some of that but it was still nice enough without the colour.

Overall, this was an incredibly successful night for me in regards to the doubles I decided to take a look at and if it wasn't for some cloud cover affecting the beginning of my night I may have managed a few more. The amazing thing is that there are still lots more doubles for me to check out in Ursa Minor alone, never mind the other constellations! They could probably keep me busy for years although I suspect many of them aren't the most exciting to look at.

A Brief Deep Space Object Tour

As the weather hasn't been that great recently here in the central belt of Scotland I can't help myself but try and see as much as possible when I do get the odd bit of clear skies. Therefore when the clouds obscured the constellation of Ursa Minor which is where I was looking at some double stars I decided to use the time to scan other parts of the sky for some Deep Space Objects.

The first two DSOs that I decided to take a look at were the Pleiades (Messier 45) & the Hyades (Caldwell 41). These are both open clusters within the Taurus constellation which happened to be in an area of sky with no cloud cover at all. Whilst I have looked at the Pleiades with binoculars before I had never tried to look at through my telescope and I had never looked at the Hyades at all which is a shame as it is actually the closest star cluster to Earth. In the image below which was taken from Stellarium (a great free planetarium programme) I have tried to show where the Pleiades and Hyades are located.

The first thing I noted is that with the 25mm Eyepiece which has the widest field of view of my current eyepeices I couldn't get either of these two clusters fully in view. I had heard that these are best viewed as binocular objects and I probably have to agree with that view unless you have a telescope which can give you better field of views than mine. What I actually found is that my 8x50 Finderscope gave me great views of both clusters and I ended up spending most of my time just looking at them through it. I think the Pleiades is the nicest of the two but I did like seeing the large red giant of Aldebaran in amongst the Hyades cluster. I decided to sketch the Pleiades based on what I saw via the finderscope and you can see my results below.

My sketch probably doesn't do the Pleiades justice but if any of you have a decent pair of binoculars you should take a look as there are quite a lovely sight to see. Anyway after looking at these two clusters for a while I decided to go get some views at some DSOs I had seen before, the Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31) and the Orion Nebula (Messier 42) being the first two that I gazed at for a bit. I actually think that I got the best view of the fuzzy core of Andromeda  than I have seen before so I was quite happy with that.

My final targets for the night where the Cigar Galaxy (Messier 82) and Bode's Galaxy (Messier 81). I have seen these two galaxies before but never managed to see them from my back garden but tonight was the night as the lovely clear sky and the lack of neighbours safety lights enabled me to get some nice if fleeting views. However, it appears that I have missed the chance to see the supernova in the Cigar Galaxy which was a bit disappointing.

The sky was pretty clear in Ursa Minor by the time I finished with the last two galaxies so I now turned my attention to Double Star spotting which I will discuss in my next blog post.