Shipley Park Oserving Session
Our first observing session for 2010 was against the backdrop of the full moon but this did not detract from the good seeing conditions. Mars was visible all evening and was a perfect observational target.
Here's our chaman's blog.
Mid-Winter Madness
The date is 30th January 2010
The Location is |Shipley Hill, Heanor Derbyshire
The time is 23:57hrs
-3 deg C
Five members from our society having a whale of a time on a clear winters night. . Now I know why whales have so much blubber. It went down to -3 Deg C as we watched the cars start to frost over.
The main attraction on the night was Mars, which was on its close approach to the earth. There were very good views of Orion in the South West, Ursa Major in the north, Cassiopeia in the north west and the south which was dominated by the very bright and full moon.
Russell King brought along his reliable 10inch Newtonian scope with a web camera and computer which proved to be very successful. Whilst Matt Bowley used his 150 Skywatcher Pro 150mm (6") f/27 Maksutov-Cassegrain & DLSR camera. I have not seen Mat’s results yet.
Other members were Mark Thomas who brought along his camera and John & Neil Cuthberston who joined in the observations.
As you can see, they looked a bit of a ghostly lot.
Talking of which, we had a group of unexpected visitors turn up and join us for a while. The group was an organised ghost watch from Heanor. They were touring the area on foot looking for ghostly apparitions.
They stopped and talked to us for a while and looked through the telescopes and then moved on. There were some potential members there and I must confess, I slipped up on not giving them information on how to join IDAS.
The session was eventually finished in the early hours and we all went home with the knowledge of a good session in the bag. Here is a small selection of photos from my DSLR.
URSA MAJOR
CASSIOPEIA
ORION
Hope to see you all at the next Observing session. Everyone welcome…. including none members!
Chris Wilson
IDAS Chairman