A better night out

Last night was one of the better nights of the year so far. Well actually it was the first night this year I've managed to get my 6SE out and see some objects. And the first chance I've had since the infamous night of the 11th of December when it was crystal clear but I got home too late. My wife also joined me for some of the early observations and she was as impressed as I was with what we saw.

Although it was relatively clear, and surprisingly warm, there were clouds moving across so we had to wait a little while but managed to get a reasonable alignment on Betelgeuse and Rigel - the two stars I could easily identify. One object I've wanted to see for some time is the Orion Nebula (M42), so that was the first thing we looked at. Wow! That whole region is full of stars and once you know where to look for it, the nebula is even visible through the 8x20 monocular I have. A decent pair of 10x50 binoculars would be more than enough to see it well.

Mars was pretty high by this time, about 9pm, so I could see it well as a bright sand-coloured dot. For some reason, and I have no idea why, I didn't swap to my 15mm eyepiece to get more magnification and stayed with the 25mm I use for alignment. Very odd.

The onto the Pleiades, small but impressive. And then it all went horribly wrong when I kicked the tripod. I managed to get the Pleiades back into alignment and then realigned on Rigel and Betelgeuse but from that point onwards my GOTOs were a bit off so apart from looking for a few DSOs I used the rest of the time I was out to identify stars for later observing sessions - Castor and Pollux, Procyon and Aldebaran - which worked wll enough. And then it started to get cold so I packed up.

A couple of things occurred to me. First I need to get some form of dictaphone so that I can record observations. I know I looked at M34, M35 and M36 but I can't really recall what I saw so need to take notes. Second I can only really look at objects in the eastern sky as the glow from central London is pretty disruptive. Which is OK because there's lots of interesting stuff there at the moment but it would be nice to have the option. Anyone for switching the lights off in Canary Wharf?