Observation reports - Pott Shrigley cricket ground ...

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.

29/05/01 - observing report

During Tuesday evening after making tentative enquiries during the previous Saturday, I managed to speak to the Chairman of Pott Shrigley cricket club. I asked if it would be possible to use the location as an observing site for our Society. I'm glad to say that he is more than happy for us to do so. How lucky are we, having two observing sites to choose from?!

It is worth pointing out that it is our intention to continue using Langley as our primary observing site.

Briefly, I'll should mention what Pott Shrigley has to offer ... Access is easy and car parking is plentiful; it has a wonderfully unobstructed southern horizon (probably even better than Langley) stretching from the east to west; to the north the sky is obstructed by hills. In terms of quality of sky, I would say that it isn't likely to be as dark as Langley as it is sandwiched between Macclesfield and Stockport. The Moon was present so didn't give us a true indication if darkness.

But what a Moon it was! Almost at half phase, the terminator looked superb. Just after Chris had arrived, I noticed that the seeing appeared to be unusually steady. At 50x, Chris likened the view through my 4" refractor to be photographic. I used a red filter on the eyepiece to keep contrast high and brightness low, so as not to affect our adaptation to the darkness.

I wondered how much magnification the view would take before degrading into fuzziness - 80x, 111x, 166x ...? Actually, 333x and the image was still as sharp as a tack! Chris and I had stumbled across one of those 'once in a while' nights again, the second in one month!

As I have already said, the terminator looked awesome and at 333x, it was almost as if we were in orbit around the Moon. Even the fully illuminated portion of the surface was rich in contrast. We swept across Vallis Alpes, an extremely mountainous region punctuated by a deep scar running south west to north east. There are so many peaks here I'd defy anyone to count them all! Rima Hyginus, a series of depressions across the Lunar surface was extremely defined, Chris pointed out the feature through his ETX. For me, one of the most unusual sights was Cassini, an impact crater with two craters within it, easily resolved with the 4".

As the Moon began to set behind the hill behind us, Mars had risen in the South. If the seeing was so good, surely we'd be able to see surface details on the planet even though it was so low. We were right - at 166x Syrtis Major and Hellas sprang into view. The former looks to me like an Africa or South America on Mars, easily distinguishable as a blue-grey region against the red Martian surface. Hellas is a very deep bowl-shaped depression that tends to fill with cloud. Therefore, it looks almost white - the cloud tops reflecting the light from the Sun. Without our knowledge of what Mars is really like from the images sent back from the Mariner, Viking, Pathfinder and Global Surveyor missions, it is easy to understand that early astronomers thought the Red Planet was much like Earth and probably inhabited. For all intent and purposes, regions such as Syrtis Major look just like landmass or vegetation.

Don't you find it hard to believe that you can see such things millions of miles from Earth? I do! For me, that's what makes what we see through our telescopes so remarkable.

Andrew Greenwood

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