Showing posts with label bino night. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bino night. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Bino observing

Now and then the clouds opened, but sometimes it was still raining now and then. I decided to observe with my 10x50 bino.....With that I can hop in and out of the house in a flash and still do some observing.
I started around 1930hrs, temperature 2.7C seeing: bad.
M42 Orion Nebula: nicely visible just between the 2 groups of stars (they form a straight line with M42). By looking periphery the nebula became slightly bigger.
M36 & M38 (Auriga): these star clusters were visible as weak nebulae.
M45 Pleiades: nice and beautiful open star cluster. Nebulae not visible. Fits the FOV (field of view) in my bino nicely.
After that some clouds came in and after a while the whole sky was covered in it: so I hopped quickly inside the house.
2215hrs, temperature 1.8C Seeing: average
M44: Praesepe beehive cluster. Nice open star cluster, comes out of the background. Stars of almost the same magnitude. Fits easily in the FOV of the bino.
Clouds again, so I hopped inside the house.
2236hrs, temperature 1.4C Seeing: good (despite the almost full moon that just rose above the horizon)
M37 (Auriga) & M35: visible as very faint nebulae. Directly visible.
Mel 25 Hyades in Taurus: very open star cluster. It consist of more sub-groups.
After that I observed Saturn (between Leo and the moon).
So: I could still do some (unexpected) observing......