Above the Cloud - the blog!

Friday 17/9/2010 02:15 BST: Chi Cygni; 8" SCT 100x; S=6, T=6. Unable to identify the LPV within the fov of dim stars. Chi is slowly increasing in luminosity towards a February 2001 maximum. 01:40 BST; SS Cygni; 8" SCT 100x; S=6, T=6. Sky overhead is very clear and at 100x, the fov is packed with faint stars. With averted visio, the faintest that I can see is +12.8. SS Cygni is much brighter than the +11.4 comp-star but fainter than the +10.9 comp-star. My estimate of it's magnitude is therefore +11.1 using the AAVSO star map. Thursday 16/9/2010 23:00 BST; Chi Cygni; 8" SCT 100x; S=7, T=8. The sky is exceptionally very clear. No apparent confirmed sighting of Chi, though it it one of many faint stars in the fov. 02:35 BST; Jupiter; 8" SCT 100x; S=7, T=7 Sky is crisp and the image of the planet is sharp. NEB is very prominent but the SEB is ot where it should be. In fact it is not there at all! All other cloud features are visable and well defined even at his low ...

Tuesday 24/8/2010: Clear skies early this morning 00:15 hrs BST to be exact, gave me the opportunity to check on the Semi-regular variable W Cygni in the constellation of Cygnus. Now that I have observed it a few times I can pick it up with little effort using 10x50 binoculars. So the Sun-chair came out onto the patio and I lay back to look up at Cygnus. The red star appears to be dimmer than when I last observed it and my magnitude estimate of 5.6 confirms this. Though the waxing gibbous Moon to the SE brightened the sky somewhat but being almost directly overhead, not enough to drown-out the feeble light from a mag 8.0 star in the same field-of-view. I also looked for the variable AF Cygni but alas no luck. In any case the sky was rapidly getting bright due to the Moon and time dictated that sleep was a priority so at 1am BST I called it a night. At 23:00hrs BST - I know I left it late due to the rapidly advancing Moon - I decided that as the southern aspect was washed-out with moon...

Thursday 12th: Today being the "Glorious 12th" is the peak of the Perseid Meteors. Every year at DAS were have a Barbecue out at Austerfield Field Study Centre when society members come together for a bit to eat, have a drink and socialise as a prelude to watching the meteor display - clear sky permitting! There was a good turn-out by members. Well as you'd expect it was cloudy with rain showers but at about 11:15pm the sky began to clear, Cassiopeia and Perseus could be seen, the Milky-Way hung across the sky and looked majestic, Jupiter shone brightly to the south-east...and the display was on! The more hardier of us stayed and witnessed a good show! Between 11:25 and 12:16pm, I personally saw 13 Perseids, some were quite spectacular, being bright flashes and leaving long trails in the sky. Tired and with the prospect of work at 8am, I said my farewells and departed for home. The few that stayed until about 2am were treated to many more Perseids! When I got home, the s...

Friday 6/8/2010 : Finally, after one thing or another and with a moderately clear sky, I am getting back into Variable Star observing. I've decided to make the constellation of Cygnus my prime target for the rest of the year but I should imagine that there will be other targets that grab my attention. I have also resurrected my online account with the American Association of Variable Star Observers. this is a society with members both professional and amateur and the website allows real-time reporting of observations. So I got the old "star-chair" (sorry, sun-chair) out onto the patio of my garden and lay back with binoculars and managed to spend sometime looking at the semi-regular variable W Cygni! This is a first observation of this variable so it took some time to familiarise myself with the starfield. But using M39 as a guide, I got there in the end!

Monday 12/4/2010 : Went down to the society observatory in Austerfield with Sandra and there we met with Brian who had already opened up the Domes. We specifically wanted to look at the close pairing of Venus and Mercury from the 14" Meade SCT. Unfortunately, both were in semi-obscured by tree branches but we did see both! Not enough time to webcam though! So now with the onset of darkness, I stayed with the 14" SCT to webcam Mars and Saturn then maybe tour some close Doubles. The sky was very steady and the Seeing was very good. Brian took Sandra and her list of Messier objects and used the other Dome that houses the 11" Vixen. By now it was 2200 BST and Mars was inthe south-west sky in the constellation of Cancer quite close to M44. Saturn was over to the est in Virgo close to Beta Virginis. At prime focus with a 2x barlow I obtained some remarkably stead footage of Mars in 90 sec shorty-movies. Swining the bermoth 14" scope over to Saturn, I did the same but not...