February Observing Report

I've had even better views of Saturn than last year. This is mainly because of the new telescope mounted on the EQ6. I'm able to view the planet in my 6mm eyepiece and 2x barlow in this scope giving me a whopping magnification of 400x. I even tried it with the 3x barlow giving occasional awesome views when the atmosphere was still enough.

I managed three fantastic images over one very successful weekend. My first being Saturn which clearly showed how the rings are closing up compared to the last two years. My next image was the Bodes Galaxies in Ursa Major which I have photographed before in the 120mm scope. This time I had the 250px on a very sturdy mount with better tracking. I was very pleased with the results. My final image was a bit of a tricky affair. This detailed photo of the International Space Station has been my third attempt at photographing it with a webcam through my dobsonian telescope only this time with a 2x barlow lens in the mix. Desperately hard to keep up with the object at this magnification but 2 single frames out of 2000 odd in the video gave me two good images.

I have now observed the Eskimo Nebula at high magnification for the first time. Reasonably good seeing conditions allowed me to see the Crab Nebula (M1) and the Triangulumn Galaxy (M33) both for the first time. I was very surprised to see the Triangulumn Galaxy