Limerick Astronomy Club

Hi All,
At the club meeting last night, it was decided to have an observing session given the current spate of clear weather.
We're meeting up at Ivans at the ennis road in Limerick at 8.30pm and from there we're heading to the Burren carpark for a good nights observing, you dont have to have a telescope to come along , although if you do bring one you'll be on for a great light show at the dark sky site.
Wrap up very well as its gonna be cold, bring a flask of tea/soup if you have one.

All are welcome.

Yes yes yes!
I'm off tonight.
If ye want to go in convoy I can be waiting on the slip road outside my house at 8:30.

(So excited its not even funny)

Simon. Will you be going? Will you be bringing the 10"?

I hope these clouds clear off
Looking at the sat images, they formed just before midday, hopefully they'll dissipate as the sun goes down.

ok, comparing 2 and 3 oclock sat images, it looks like there is a clearance coming down from the north east,

and the skies have cleared !!!, it's looking like a 100% night tonight

Yes! It's totally clear.
The air looks stable. No jet stream. Little wind. No moon. Can't get better than this!
I was hoping Simon would come with the 10" I'd have loved a chance to use it tonight.

man!, that was totally awesome !!!!
Got home at 6.45am to fab cresent Moon in the eastern sky, totally wrecked but what a night, one to remember!!!

Got over 50+ galaxies between Virgo, Canes Venatici, Leo and nearly 20 globular clusters in Ophiuchus, Hercules, Coma Berenecies, and open clusters in Cassiopeia, Cygnus including the veil/crescent/ring/blinking/dumbbell nebulae and several other obscure planetaries....
Basically we went though the objects listed in each of the constellations as listed in "The Night Sky Observers Guide", a highly details and excellent atlas.

Once again M13 was the jaw dropper of the night, we managed to push up the magnification up to 500x using the 5mm t6 nagler, the seeing was very good as the jetstream was not over us at the time, the stars were pinpoint and rock steady which is not at all the norm at that power, the cluster filled the field of view, photographic like, several people commented at how steady the seeing was that night. M51 was a close second, spiral arms screaming out of the eyepiece...
NGC4565 was a particularly nice edge of galaxy, dust lane and core and distinct shape easily seen and very big!, spanning the fov of a 9mm eyepiece, and we tried the mag 16 supernova in M65 but we couldn't see it, at the best of times that level of brightness is on the limits of what the obsessionator can do and seeing such a star in a bright background galaxy just wasn't going to happen unfortunately...
The theoretical limiting magnitude for the scope is between 16 and 17.

and then we cought comet panstarrs as it rose in the early morning,nice tail but certainly not nearly as fan like as some photographs depict... more of a straight usual tail like structure.

From a scope performance point of view, the obsessionator motors got a run for its money tonight and its gotos worked fine all night and the mirrors kept the collimation well, heaters kept the eyepieces and secondary mirror dew free all night, the scopes shroud and uta were covered in a thick layer of frost.

Many thanks to Gordon, Frank, Conan, Jim and Fergus for coming along and making this a super night.

Ill be out again tonight for anyone interested, I'll be using either the dome or obsessionator in the back garden fi you'd like to come along...

Well went out to the dome tonight and did some satellite tracking, then tried Jupiter and realized I had just missed the Ganymede transit , then tried a few doubles as the clouds rolled in, just finished 15mins ago, so not too bad a night.
So have our clear skies gone again now for another 4 months ?? I hope not.

I hope not!
Got home just before 6.
Saw that awesome moon rising.
Up then at 10 and on the road to Gallimh, just in the door now.
I'm surprisingly lucid considering.

Hey guys..

Sounded like a good weekend of
Observing, hopefully I'll be able to
join ye all again with my new baby
but it's looking like it might be awhile
before I'll be out with ye again..

Cheers Roy

This was taken by Frank Ryan and its of myself with the 20" obsessionator scope. This was taken at the Burren observing site in county Clare in the early hours of April 6th 2013. Frank had pinned down comet Panstarrs in his binoculars as it rose in the east, it was in the dim skyglow over Galway city, He guided me how to move the scope until he could see the laser was on the comet in his binoculars, hey presto we then had it in the scopes eyepiece, beats me having to look for it
The foreground has been severely brightened in photoshop otherwise nothing of the foreground would have been visible.
The laser isnt that bright

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8384/8646 ... 8f41_b.jpg