Observation Report 14/4/05

[MooEy]

just woke up after a long night of obbing. finally had a chance to drag out the r200ss and the sphinx mount to have some fun.

session started at 10pm. sky was freaking bad with lightning before 10, but after 10 till morning it was clear, with maybe a little bit of high clouds. ob site was RP's carpark. the estates were nice to have the lights around the carpark turned off.

first 2hr we were trying out and aligning the scope. did some lite obbing. jupiter was nice, i sighted 10 bands, charlie and another guy thought they could see 12 bands. there was a shadow transit.

the 8x D cells eventually went dead at 12. the SLA battery, after being left alone for 6 months, did not power up at all. we got the batt charged and hope for some luck later.

did some more lite obbing on the 2 3" toy scopes. took down some of the common summer objects. stuff like jewel box, omega centauri, m6, m7, m22 looked gd. some of us took a short nap till ard 3am.

3am, we decided to drag the SLA batt out to see if it would powered the mount. struggled a little trying to align the scope(i made so many mistake here). figured out the time was a little off on the starbook. finally managed to get the thing 3 star aligned by 3.25am.

accuracy of the goto wasn't wonderful, since the scope wasn't properly polar aligned. the next 1 hr we took down almost every single object in the south in my book. we aligned the scope to roughly 12 points during the night, which greatly increase the accuracy of the goto.

list of objects acquired during the night: m6, m7, m8, m20, m21 ,m28, m22,m54,m70, m69, m55, ngc6541, ngc6231, m4, m62, m80, m25, m23, m26, ngc 6649, ic 4756, ngc6633, ic4665, m14, m10, m12, m107.

objects in north was much lesser, only managed to get m27. the building was blocking most of our north view >.<

among the objects sighted in the south, i feel that most of them are gobular clusters which doesn't look any better than a circular white fuzzy spot in the middle of the scope. the star clusters, particularly m23, ic 4665 were impressive. some of the nebs, like m20, m17, m27 were impressive too. too bad no filters for the night.

will post more later if i'm free. let's hope we can get more clear skies

~MooEy~

[Airconvent]

hi mooey
its been a while since anyone here has made an observation report or have been so productive...man..I'm itchy again! now all we need is some good sky.

[weixing]

Hi,
The problem is that the sky is clear only after mid-night and the next day is a working day

Anyway, hope tonight (saturday) is clear...

Have a nice day.