Southern Sentinel Observing Report

Clear Skies. Mild & Calm. Ocassional Cloud

Limiting Magnitude 6.0, transparency 2.5/5, seeing 3/5

Nearly New Moon.

13.1 Inch Dobsonian, TeleVue Paracorr & Eyepieces & Lumicon Filters

When I arrived at the observatory half an hour later with the trailer, sky was clear and I set up the scope. Just as I had finished setting up Dave Moorhouse arrived and was suprised to see me as I he had not expected to see anyone there. He proceeded to set up the big Binos and I helped him get ready.

The conditions were a bit on the milky side and cloud would sweep through but this was only a minor irritation.

As last month, I set up the DSCs to communicate directly with the laptop connected to Skymap Pro.

I planned to look through the remaining objects in Leo and then switch across to the Virgo Galaxy Cluster which were the objects that we designated for May.

Objects Observed were;

Guy Thornley turned up at about 8:30 PM as Dave and I were working through the Virgo cluster.

I went through the Virgo objects quite quickly identifying them on the laptop and the eyepiece. There was no intention in logging each object with detailed descriptions, the systematic working through of the list was the intention.

Here is the path through the cluster that I took.

It is often hard to decide which path to take with so many objects in a small area of the sky.

The DSCs are perfect for bringing speed to the hunting of objects. The DSCs were about 10-15 arc minutes out throughout the night, but I think this is due to poorly positioned alignment stars. Offsetting this error was easy and objects were always within the FOV.

Finished at about 9:15 PM and put the scope away in the Observatory. Another good night at the scope.