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Impressions of Hardraw, October 28-30, 2005 ...
Broken cloud, tantalizing Milky Way...!
A relative newcomer to the society and a first timer at Hardraw I was
anxious to make my first observation. It came at 8:00pm on Friday night
when I spotted a friendly face from Macc Astro in the Chippy at Hawes.
I knew I was at the right place on the right weekend – phew!!
There had been some rain on the drive up to Hawes and there was plenty
of puddles around – was the sky going to clear for us? Yes it did,
and by 9:30 telescopes were being assembled in the back garden at Harris
House, Hardraw and although not totally cloudless the clear patches were
big enough to find some guide stars and get the go-to aligned.
Now I was really excited. I had bought my Meade LX90 about a year ago
with the proceeds from selling my motorbike and since then seem to have
been dogged with the most terrible weather. The only clear skies seemed
to be on nights when I had prearranged to do something else. Added to
this I had spent 3 months after a shoulder operation unable to lift my
scope. I was desperate to get a good viewing session in a dark location.
Although regulars said that they have had better seeing conditions at
Hardraw, these looked pretty good to me and were the best combination
of dark and clear sky I had seen since buying a scope.
Mars was the real highlight of the night, so bright and so steady. There
was none of the ‘boiling’ you often see and structure was
clearly visible on the surface. I’m looking forward to seeing the
images. What a great start. I also got the chance to borrow a range of
eyepieces and explore their advantages and disadvantages for planetary
work; 16mm seemed to be optimal for my scope in the conditions.
I had brought with me a long list of ‘must see’ items so I
settled down to see what I could find. The alignment, although done in
a bit of a hurry (for me at any rate), was proving very accurate. Malcolm
had also lent me his finder scope with an angled eyepiece so I didn’t
have to kneel in the mud to use my basic straight through finder. He also
lent me his compact batteries, which fit between the forks and avoided
any cord wrap complications. So what else did I see? I worked through
a list of M Numbers, some I had seen before but not nearly so clearly.
The open clusters in Auriga and Gemini (M35 – 38) all looked really
good as did Andromeda and its two companions. I spent a good hour just
roaming the sky with the go-to, finding my way around and comparing the
colour of stars. The most stunning sight was Gamma Andromedae, a double
with the most striking colour differences, in the seeing conditions we
had I would have described one star as yellow and the other as greenish
white although having looked them up since I find they are described as
orange and bluish-white. I couldn’t get to this star on my scope
so was grateful to Stephen and Diane for letting me view it through their
10in Meade. The problem I had was that my Meade lists the stars by name
and at that time I didn’t know this star was called Almaak. I suppose
I could have found it by trial and error, going through all the stars
in Andromeda in turn or I could have borrowed the co-ordinates.
The seeing wasn’t really good enough for me to find the fainter
deep sky stuff on my list. I spent a while trying to find M1, the Crab
Nebula, but failed. I continued star hopping for another hour when Andrew
announced he had located the North America Nebula so we all lined up to
have a look and verify this. I can’t be sure whether I saw it or
not as I was just getting my eye in when it clouded over. It was getting
close to 2am and I was convinced that we had seen all we were going too
so I packed my scope away. We went inside for tea and a tot of whisky
and were still chatting an hour later when the sky really cleared. I was
too shattered to set up my scope again and anyway I was really pleased
with what I seen so far. Instead I got my camp chair and binoculars and
was well rewarded. The Andromeda galaxy was so clear in the bins –
better possibly that my earlier views through the scope. And then there
was the Orion Nebula, which had risen by now – again a stunning
object in the bins. I spent about an hour running through my Messier binocular
favourites or just looking at the Milky Way with the naked eye and went
to bed at about 4am – tired but happy.
On Saturday afternoon 5 of us went hiking, led by Stephen and Diane. We
climbed the Nine Standards – quite an energetic walk for sleep-deprived
astronomers. The Nine Standards are nine huge stone cairns built on the
ridge above Kirby Stephen – allegedly to frighten the Scots invaders!
Observing started again about 10pm on returning from the Green Dragon.
There was much more cloud and it took me many tries to find two decent
guide stars and set the go-to up. Eventually got going but only the southern
sky was clear. There were good views of Mars though so I had more time
to experiment with different eyepieces. Just after midnight it clouded
over so we went inside for tea and whisky. I left my scope set up hoping
that it would clear. No such luck this time – instead it started
to drizzle and I ended up rushing to get it back into the dry. More chatter,
tea and whisky and then turned in at about 2am.
Overall a really enjoyable weekend, I’m looking forward to going
again.
Richard Lowe
Click on an image to see a larger version.
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 July and August updates ...
The bright twilight nights are slowly giving way to darker skies and the prospect of revealing a little-known nightly sight. Away from the towns and cities, the Milky Way will soon be glimpsed meandering through the constellation of Cygnus. This river of stars was worshipped by the ancient Egyptians ... Nowadays, especially when we approach the end of Summer, it's astronomers that turn their gaze skyward and praise the sight of a myriad of stars arching high above them.
The following sections have been updated: This month's night sky and observations.
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Would you like to join our newly formed visual observing group? We will now be holding regular observing sessions at some of our dark-sky sites across Macclesfield. If you would llike to be added to our contact list, don't delay ... Click
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For information on our observing
field trips to Hardraw, Yorkshire ... Click
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Our Workshops continue to be a
great success. As a result we are looking for more of you
to participate and give your own short presentations to Society
members. Let us know if you'd like to get involved ... Click
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