I had a feeling in my water works since Thursday the 6th that Friday night would be a special one for NLCs but I also loaded my 14" Skywatcher into the car for some southern sky viewing and that turned out to be very special indeed.
I went observing to Bragan which greeted me to stunning skies and almost no wind. The concrete floor of the picnic area was really warm to the touch and even when packing up at 02:30 in the morning is was still very warm to the touch, so as you could image it was a very comfortable night and I spent all of it with nothing more than a light pair of sports bottoms, a T-shirt and a light top on.
I had a good friend of mine with me to share the event with so there was plenty of silly chatter while I got all the gear set up. Whilst setting up I noticed two missed calls from the Chairman. I returned the call and it wasn't long until he was on the road down to me.
The southerns skies were the best it was ever going to be at this time of year so any chance of observing M6 and M7 was going to happen tonight, if it was possible at all.
The session started off a little disappointing as NLCs were not making an appearance after sunset. I still took a few photos to see if there was any sign of faint NLC but none, though I did get a nice shot with Venus in it, which is my first image on the gallery for this report.
I started the evening by looking at Saturn. The image was really crisp. I was a little worried that the heat from the concrete would cause a lot of turbulence in the the views but it seemed to have little or no effect as even at 175x Saturn looked really sharp with the Cassini division very obvious to see. To my added delight I could also see four of Saturn's moons, Titan being the obvious - of course - and referencing with Starry Night Pro I believe that I was also seeing Tethys, Rhea and Dione as the positions of them on the software match the positions of where the moons were when I observed them.
Very soon after I had let my friend have a look two cars pulled up. One presented a car load of fellas who seemed to be enjoying their Friday night and wondered what I was at. I presented them with a view of Saturn which seem to impresses them all. So much so it seems that they came back about 40 minutes later for a second look and also saw the ISS passing and tried to explain to them what the ISS was. It's always nice to be able to give an exciting first experience of observing the night sky and I can't think of a better way to do it than with Saturn.
The second car was a gentleman with his son, whom I had also met at the Crom Castle event last year. It was nice meeting them again and I gave some a tiny tour of some of the best Messier objects to view.
During all this excitement Stevie had arrived and soon after that everyone went back on their way and it was just me, my friend and Stevie so it was time to get the night started.
It was about 01:00 when I thought I could see a bright glow behind the cloud to the NNE so I took a few images on the DSLR and WOW! Super bright NLC activity. The cloud started to break up and dissipate a bit allow me to see it visually and the intensity was seriously impressive. I just kept the camera going, taking images every few minutes. I couldn't seem to get decent focus on my images until near the end and I couldn't understand why. By 02:00 this display exploded into an awesome sight. Straight to the North I could see beautiful wave features and looking back to the NNE and NE I could see delicate wispy features around the edges of the intense brightness.
During all this imaging there was Messier hunting going on too. My goal for tonight was to observe M6 and 7 for the first time through a scope. By about 01:30 am it was as high as they were going to get and the sky had cleaned up pretty well, well enough to give us a chance. At first I couldn't see anything but soon I realised that these are pretty wide angle open clusters so I converted my Hyperion to a 20mm and that did the tick.
M6 was well seen, the shape of the cluster was prominent and I could count something close to 30 stars.
M7 was tricky at first but after getting it centered in the eyepiece I shared the view with Stevie who went silent and then pulled out a piece of paper and started to draw start positions. He then quickly went over to my copy of Sue French's "Deep Sky Wonders" to compare start positions with her images and it was bang out. We'd really have needed a 27 or 30mm eyepiece to fits this cluster all into the FOV but there was no doubt we saw it and it was a very exciting and reward observation. Spent a good time looking at it, mainly just enjoy it but also to try and memorize the sight.
It was pushing on for 02:30 by this stage and the NE sky was getting very bright so it was time to call it a night and I really couldn't have ended a summer session on a better high, I really was buzzing and Stevie had a very obvious smile on his face too.
Now the report is over, time for the images of the NLCs.
The first image was taken and no NLCs were present but I did get Venus, which is on the lower left of the image. Shame I didn't have the camera moved more the West and I might have caught Mercury too.
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