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Post by Martin Mc kenna on Nov 2, 2005 18:30:35 GMT
Hi all
Looks like Oct turned out to be another great month for observing, the first half of the month was very cloudy however the 2nd half was great..
* Attended a great EAAS meeting on Comets by Pro Mark Bailey
* Seen one Circumzenithal Arc
* A 22* solar halo
* 22* Sundog
* A section of Parhelic circle
*4 Moon Pillars
* Five 30* Lunar Haloes
* 2 Moondogs
* A lunar Upper Tangent Arc
* I have observed the elusive Gegenschein for 5 nights in a row!
* Observed the Zodical light 3 times
* Made an independant discovery of a SOHO comet in the LASCO C3 images (7th find to date) .
* Many great nights observing Mars
* Visually observed the Merope nebula (NGC1435) in M45 using an 8"telescope.
*Observed Messier 81 with the naked eye!!!
* Observed pink, red and purble colours visually in the Orion Nebula using a 16" instrument.
* Seen two amazing Taurid Fireballs and over a 3 night period seen 247 meteors..most came from the Taurid meteor stream.
* Seen one AMAZING aurora display that was the 2nd best i have ever seen out of 59 displays.
Spent 15 hours 58mins comet hunting bringing my total to 843 hours 45 mins of searching since May 1st 2000. Have swept up 2896 telescopic satellites and 262 telescopic meteors!
Who knows what will happen this month...love this hobby!
Clear skies
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Post by Aaron on Nov 3, 2005 12:25:46 GMT
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Post by NeilP on Nov 3, 2005 13:45:45 GMT
That is one impressive list for a Month, some people won't see all that in a lifetime!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Mark K
Canis Major
LX200GPS UHTC/SMT
Posts: 75
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Post by Mark K on Nov 3, 2005 15:02:08 GMT
Who knows what will happen this month...love this hobby! Hobby ? ? ? ? Sounds like a full time occupation for you Martin When do you sleep ? ? LoL
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Post by paulevans on Nov 3, 2005 15:36:30 GMT
That's incredible Martin, that's probably more than I've ever seen!
I have seen M81 with the naked eye, but there was a pair of 15 x 70s in front of them at the time :-) That's seriously good eyesight - isn't M81 right down about mag 8.5 or so?
Clear skies,
Paul.
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Post by Martin Mc kenna on Nov 3, 2005 17:04:38 GMT
Thanks very much everyone for the comments! M81 is mag 6.9 so nearly 7th magnitude! Give it a go...its not difficult once you know its location and when you do spot it you can tell people that you can see a galaxy 4.5 million light years away with the naked eye!!! I was very pleased to have found a lovely SOHO comet complete with stubby tail on the LASCO C2 images last night..however a Japanese observer beat me to it Was very exciting for a while. Aurora activity went a biyt mental before dawn this morning but i was clouded out here. All best
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Post by Martin Mc kenna on Nov 3, 2005 17:34:16 GMT
Just got this email from Karl regarding the comet i spotted.....
Hi Martin,
Good news: it's certainly a real Kreutz-group comet!
Bad news: it was reported by Hua Su at Nov 02 2005 11:07:21!
It is good to see that you have been able to identify and accurately measure that comet. It was certainly not a bright one -- very easy to miss. Later on in the month, some of the C2 comets will be brighter and less diffuse than that one but they will all move at basically that same speed.
Happy hunting!
~~Karl
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Post by Martin Mc kenna on Nov 3, 2005 19:07:16 GMT
Can you spot the new comet on the image below?...
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