It was a terrible day with prolonged heavy rain and wind which caused quite a bit of flooding around low land. The met office showed good looking clear sky to move in for about 21:00 and to last the whole night.
By about 19:30 the sky started to break and as the minutes went by things began to look more promising.
By the time I got to the site, which was about 21:50, it was reasonably clear but after setting up all my gear cloud moved in, with it's usual style, and didn't blow over until after an hour of waiting.
Once the cloud did clear things looked fine. The milky way was looking great and NGC 7000 was naked eye again but no sooner did I start a yucky haze came in a lurked around with braked in between but it killed transparency quite a bit so I didn't get to see an awful lot as my nights planner was full of emission and reflection nebula to stress test my UHC-S and the OIII filter.
I had a terrible scare half way through my observing. Dew was rather bad, leaving the OTA soaking wet, and I had not fully tightened the tube rings after balancing my scope - I just forgot from being scundered about the haze - and while observing NGC 6888 the OTA fell to the ground! My heart was in my mouth and nerves making me shake but luckily the rings were tight enough to stop it at the focus mount, so I turned the power off to the mount and got the OTA back on securely and resumed my observations.
In the end I gave into frustrations and the weather and packed up just after 01:00
Anyway, the night was as follows:
Observing Site = Carrin Rock
Equipment = EQ6 Pro and Orion 10" Newt
Seeing = 3
Trans = 2/3
Start Time = 23:54
NGC 9481 = A first time observation for me on this object. It was faint but apparent with AV, showing a lovely thin ring. The UHC-S did bring out more detail but also reduced brightness, thus making it hard to see.
NGC 6888 = Appearing nicely at low power with OIII. The crescent Sharpe arching nicely around the near by stars in the center of the FOV. Not my best observation but still a thrill to see this object visually.
IC 1318 = Not much to see - probably due the bad transparency of due to the haze - at any magnification or any filter. Just a bright circular shaped haze could be seen around the brightest star in the FOV
Finish Time = 01:07
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