- By Dave Smith
-
Date: Sat/Sun 1/2 June 2002
- Location: Club dark sky site on the Dengie
- Telescope: VC200L (8" cat reflector) with SS2k
- Present: Ron, Ted, Jim, Bernard & myself
- The evening started off badly with strips of low cloud appearing in the west covering
the Venus & Jupiter. As the planets set so the clouds disappeared. Pluto was my main
target for the night. I had printed a finder chart using Skymap Pro.
Once it was properly dark I used SS2k to get to the right region of the sky. It was quite
easy to recognise a pattern of 4 stars near the predicted position of Pluto and hence see
where Pluto should be. As expected nothing was visible.
I had started using my favourite eyepiece, a 22mm super wide Lanthanum but as the
background was not very dark I x2 barlowed it which gave better contrast. Still no Pluto.
For about half an hour I tried averted vision, shutting my eyes completely for a time
before viewing and avoided using even the dimmest of red lights as much as possible as it
had a distinct effect on what I could see. Eventually a faint tiny point of light came
into view for just a moment and then go. This happened a few times.
According to Skymap Pro there was a star of magnitude 14.2 quite close to Pluto (mag 13.8)
so I decided that I could not be sure to have seen Pluto unless I could see the pair of
them at the same time. They were also in line with a bright star TYC5651-1680-1 mag 6.96.
After about another 15 mins or so the two did briefly pop into view. This happened about 5
or 6 times in the next half hour. So I feel justified in claiming to have seen Pluto.
Earlier in the night I had looked at the Swan Nebula (Omega Neb M17) which was
recognisable but only just. After finding Pluto I had another look at the Swan and it was
wonderful, as clear as any picture I have seen (e.g. in O'Meara - the Messier Objects).
Other memorable objects that night were a very small but red Mars (under the earlier
cloud), A distinctly blue Uranus and Neptune, a last look at Ikeya-Zhang comet and also
two very bright passovers of the ISS. The Milky Way was the clearest I have seen with the
dark gap in the middle as it leads South through Sagitta & Sagittarius easy naked eye.
Finally the night finished off with a beautiful last quarter Moon rising over the Sea and
shortly after that dawn approaching.
-
- A wonderful night.