Observing Session Summary - Saturday 17th May 2014

Butser Ancient Farm was open Saturday so had a another good chance to use the new scope and even the smartphone adapter for some astrophotography. It was a moonless night so had an ambitious list of targets. Although, some I could not see because the observing sight has a hill that makes objects in the far west difficult.

Here I provide the list of targets and a summary of the observations.

Some visual observations to get familar with navigating the skies: I used some tips from Turn Left at Orion to get familiar with the Spring skies. I successfully located stars' Castor and Pollux in Gemini and Regulus in Leo. Plus stars Arcturus and Spica and the constellation Corona Borealis.

M 13 Globular Cluster (HERCULES): A spectacular sight although I think a little impacted by dew.

Comet PANSTARRS C/2012 K: In URSA major. Chart 4 Chi Star. Think I saw it. Was certainly in the right place. Appeared like a small star with a slight haze on one side which I guess was the tail.

Planet Saturn (LIBRA): I have saved the best for last. A great visual view of the open rings both. Also had some success with capturing my first ever image with my smartphone. See below. It's simply 20 images taken with my Galaxy S3 mobile mounted to the eyepiece on my telescope and then stacked in software called RegiStax.

Here is a link to my session log:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1Q_jaEOMLGVd1MxVnpsNGtvMjA/edit?usp=sharing