Observation reports - Jodrell Bank ...

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 ...!

Remember, don't forget to send your observing reports to observations@maccastro.com.

11/11/04 - Aurora!

After our visit to a school in Stockport with the inflatable planetarium on Wednesday, my housemate Stuart and I went back to Jodrell to drop off the equipment and ended up going for dinner in Goostrey with a crowd from Jodrell. During dinner we discovered that some of the people at the table knew less about the real night sky than the 8 year olds we'd been taking to all day, shocking!

So, when we left the pub and found that the sky was clear, we started a "planetarium show" in the car park, pointing out the same constellations we'd been doing all day. There was a bit of cloud around low in the north, but there was another bit of thin cloud that appeared to be moving a lot faster than, and in a different direction to, anything else nearby. Rather than being that particularly distinctive shade known as "Manchester Orange", it had a green tinge to it. "Look, aurora!" I shouted. No one else was convinced.

We decided that we might as well go back to the office and get out a telescope as we were there... As we were driving back the aurora was coming and going, but still people weren't convinced!

We made use of the grass where the visitors centre used to stand and spent a few hours trying to align my new telescope on various objects - trickier than you might think when you consider that it's on an equatorial mount without a counterweight!

But the aurora got better and better, and eventually everyone agreed with me that we were actually seeing it, and I wasn't imagining it! At times it was very bright, hovering in a sheet between Cygnus and Ursa Major, brightening and fading on timescales of a few seconds. It really was spectacular, and really made my day - I'd never seen it before!

Megan Argo

13/11/04 - Jodrell Bank star party

Saturday 13th November saw the first Star Party hosted by Jodrell Bank. A beautiful clear day gave way to a wonderful evening with transparent skies and an array of telescopes supplied by members of Macc Astro.

A group of students from Ian Morison's course, along with some observatory staff, joined us and were treated to spectacular views of all the winter favourites through a variety of telescopes and eyepieces over the course of the evening. Most didn't stay long enough to see Saturn rise above the Visitors Centre, but those that did got a good view thanks to the exceptional seeing conditions (and the controller for turning out the lights on the Lovell!).

Numerous other favorites were also visited: M31, the Orion nebula through a couple of different filters, the Pleiades, the double cluster in Perseus, the interacting galaxies M81 and M82, the Ring nebula ... the list goes on.

We really couldn't have asked for a better night with not a single cloud in the sky until after the last observer had left the site! Fingers crossed for clear skies next time!

Megan Argo

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The impromptu Jodrell Bank 'star party' went very well. There was about 9 of us in total, which quickly dwindled down to just Megan and I by about 0130.

The Lovell controller was quite kind to us and switched off the lights on the dish so there wasn't too much in the way of stray light. I'd say the limiting mag. was probably just over 5 - not bad. We saw a few Leonids, one or two Taurids and sporadics.

Of course, we toured all the favourites. The Double Cluster looked absolutely fantastic through my new 8" - very contrasty and sharp. We went on to M1, M37, M45 (which I forgot I could see in its entirety in the FOV of my 2" eyepiece - a nice surprise), M31, M29 and Sigma Orionis. The highlight was M42, lots and lots of nebulous detail - especially around the Trapezium. It's always nice to see the return of such a magnificent object!

We also visited Saturn, which was lovely. The atmosphere was fairly steady so afforded detailed views. I managed to push the magnification to over 200x without a problem. I tried just under 400, and it became very difficult to focus. Still it was worth a try ... We could see five of the planets' satellites, one of which was Titan, of course. It made me think that we're not too far away from charting new astronomical boundaries, when the Huygens probe plummets through the hazy atmosphere to reveal a very alien landscape ... Can't wait!

Andrew Greenwood

19/11/06 - The Leonids

Did you have any luck with the Leonids in 2006? Naturally, the weather wasn't good but we were observing using radio and I'm glad to say that our receiver worked really well. The clouds came and went a bit and we did get a bit of rain, but it didn't matter!

I left the kit running over Saturday night/Sunday morning to try and catch the peak. It worked! Take a look at these ...

Image one
Image two
Image three

The signatures were recorded in audio as well, but that is in the process of writing to
disk (it's 8Gb of data!). I'll upload some clips when it's compressed to mp3 format.

Megan Argo

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