Viewing Report 14th July 2026

22:00 – 03:00

Tonight I have the 150 Esprit in operation and the Seestar S30 Pro. I am imaging M56 again with the Esprit to gather an additional 1.5 hours of data. 

On the S30 Pro I started with a Milky Way shot, It was meant to be the mosaic, however the scope was on the wedge and the mosaic only works when not using the wedge. So instead I went for a single image. Clearly seen is the cloud in the distance.

Once this was completed I went to image the Lobster but landed up on the Bubble instead. So I imaged that until 3am at the end of darkness as it is.

NGC 7635 Unedited
M56 Processed 139 x 120s

Viewing Report 12th July 2026

22:00 – 03:24

Tonight was about using both the 150 Esprit from the observatory and the Sky-Watcher 180 Mak outside. I setup before darkness fell and then proceeded to send the 150 Esprit to image M56, one of the Messier objects I had still not imaged. I decided on 120s exposures and in the end took 90 of them, with a handful or so having to deleted due to movement issues, probably when I stood next to the pier.

M56 120s Exposure

The dome would not rotate at sidereal tonight. Every time I set it to 1x sidereal it would after a while run away and just keep turning. This meant I had to manually move the dome every 15mins or so during imaging.

With the Sky-Watcher 180 Mak I imaged Saturn. This time I caught it before 3am, but I also managed to work out how to use the ADC and apply colour channel shift before saving the image.

Saturn best 30% of 8,000 frames

Whilst I had a lot of frames and the colour shift is much better than the other night, the seeing was not as good tonight. The Jet stream is still out of the way, however the air was very turbulent, thus the gap in the ring cannot be seen as well tonight.

Viewing Report 24th& 25th June 2023

23:00 – 02:00

4 Epsilon Lyra Double Double star – 31mm I can see the double but not split the 2 stars; 13mm Ethos allowed me to split the doubles and the 10mm whilst slightly dimmer afforded me a slightly wider split

Cat’s Eye Planetary Nebula – 31mm very small not quite pinpoint of light visible nicely without a filter, OIII filter makes it slightly more apparent and Nebustar filter it looks marginally better; 13mm Ethos provided brighter nebula, again the filters provided a better view with the Nebustar being brightest; 10mm is the best view of them all with a definite oval shape East or West, right to left but now OIII produced the brightest and clearest view although it is pushing the seeing tonight

Turtle Planetary Nebula – Not seen

Rasalgethi Alpha Hercules Double Star – 10mm too much for tonight, could not get good focus but could easily split; 13mm Ethos the best view with brighter primary in yellow, very striking and smaller secondary blue; 31mm Nagler just splittable but both components look yellow.

Albireo Double Star – Bright large yellow primary and smaller but still bright blue star in the 13mm Ethos

M13 Hercules Globular Cluster – lovely in the 31mm Nagler; 13mm Ethos much brighter view and obviously larger with resolving more core stars; 10mm darker background so contrast better and even brighter core and stars more obvious with direct vision, including nice pair at 10pm on the cluster

M57 Ring Nebula – planned but not attempted

61 Cygni Double Star – planned but not attempted

NGC 6891 Open Cluster in Lyra – not seen in 31mm Nagler

NGC 6702 & NGC 6703 Galaxy pair – planned but not attempted

M56 Globular Cluster – 10mm dim resolvable , 13mm slightly brighter resolvable averted vision

NGC 6765 Planetary Nebula – planned not attempted

A really good night overall, the eyepieces lent to me from Bob are excellent and make the viewing more pleasurable being able to switch with my wider field of view ones.

Viewing Report 6th September 2021 – IMT3b

17:35 – 22:15

Opened dome early to cool down, we then had some cloud and it closed, so reopen around 8pm.

As it has been a very warm day, some 28℃ and is still 20℃s, I will set the camera temp to -20℃ and image a different object to avoid several sets of flats, darks and flat darks. I settled on M56 as I had not imaged this for my Messier catalogue yet.

Loads of problems, mount kept saying it was not unpacked, guider would not connect, so rebooted and all fine.

Imaging at 22:10

Gain 75 Offset 12

Rotation angle 29.420

Temp -22 (need correct Flats/Darks and Dark Flats)

When I rebooted I noticed the PHD2 setting are wrong for the guider so need to change the profile to include DirectGuide not Pulse Guide. Also need to change SGPro so that it does not autofocus at the start of a run, also so it does not set the temp to -15.

Off to bed at 22:15 and left it running.

Everything went well, the dome shut at sunrise and the images look ok, maybe slightly soft focus but only when I process will I be able to tell.