August Observing Report

As expected August has made up for June and July. For me the milky way has been the star of the show this month. I had several opportunities to view it over the new moon to first quarter moon phase period. Jaw-droppingly stunning is what comes to mind. My first decent viewing was up on the quantocks during the Perseid meteor watch. The milky way was surprisingly bright and looked like a giant dust lane splitting the whole sky in two. My second opportunity to view it was on 3 successive nights during a camp in South Devon. Probably down to excellent sky conditions and minimal light pollution, A view I think will be hard to beat in this Country.

I attended my local astronomy society's Perseid Meteor watch on the Quantock hills this year. Rates were very slow to start off with very large gaps between brief clusters of meteors. In total we got to our 100th meteor after 3 hours of viewing so not amazing rates considering it was new moon. Due to the amazing milky way I got home and took a picture of the Cygnus area to which I am very proud of

On top of the stunning milky way during this camp, I also had a look at some deep sky objects. The most notable one being M57, The ring Nebula. At 166x magnification I got the best view I have had on this object with a clearly defined ring that I usually struggle to see so well at this magnification. I could also see the double cluster and Andromeda galaxy with the naked eye