Observation reports - Fernilee reservoir ...

Reading about other people's experiences at the eyepiece of a telescope often inspires us to view the glory of the night sky. Go forth and explore ...!

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04/06/10 - The Spring dark sky at Fernilee reservoir

Down a bumpy track and across the dam there is a quiet spot ideal for a bit of deep sky watching.  The place is Fernilee Reservoir in the Goyt valley. The bumpy track keeps the boy racers away and there are no lights to ruin your night vision.  If you look South and South-East over the water you can see the low down constellations that you can never see from home.

On Wednesday 2nd of June three of us gathered to try out this new dark sly site. I arrived too late to look at Saturn which was a shame because the seeing was good.  I was able to split the ‘double double’ in Lyra with ease through my 6” Maksutov telescope that I had mounted on my HEQ5 GOTO mount. I also split the double star Cor Caroli. The ‘double cluster’ looked good as always. Despite the late spring sky not getting fully dark the Milky Way could be seen through Cygnus.  Low down to the South the tail of Scorpius with the red star Antares was peeping through the murk.  Parts of Ophiuchus and Sagittarius were also visible. The globular clusters M3, M10, M12, M13 and M14 were all impressive as was M11, the wild duck cluster, which actually does look like a formation of flying ducks.

We returned on Thursday 3rd of June. There were five of us this time and I arrived early enough to have a look at Saturn.  The seeing was bad and Saturn looked like a fuzzy blob, however for the first time in months the transparency was good. More stars and more Milky Way were visible. I went looking for nebulas. The ring nebula (M57) and the dumbbell nebula (M27) were both very impressive. As were the blue snowball and the cats eye nebula. Low down in the south I saw M17 (swan or omega nebula), M8 (lagoon nebula) and I could just about see M20 (trifid nebula). I was amazed that my 6” telescope could pick out these nebulas, M8 looked like a misty patch and M17 did look a bit like a swan.

I will be back there soon with a bigger telescope to have another look at those low down nebulas.

Christopher Hill

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