Friday, November 03, 2006

Had another clear blue sky all day, nipped outside at just after 5.00pm to wait for a predicted ISS pass due to start at 5.13pm, sure enough there it was, not as bright as Tuesday night but still very impressive. Followed it for much of the way with the monocular, probably just wishful thinking but I'm sure I could just see some detail.

It was a very long track, next time I'll try to time how long it remains visible, seemed to last several minutes for most of which it was heading away from my location.

By this time the dreaded clouds were starting to make an appearance, before they completely ruined the view I tried again to find M81 and M82 using the monocular, failed again. Now these should be easy according my books, I think the problem is that my northern aspect is pretty well light polluted. I guess I'd have to hit them right on the nose with the Skywatcher in order to see anything, but scoping around with an equatorially mounted newt is not at all easy.

later
Mitch

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:11 AM

    Sounds like you have been having some good clear skys keep up the good reporting.

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  2. Hi Mark,

    Had a few clear evenings but still lots of haze which is made worse by the moon. Of course I could stay up all night until the moon has set but work interferes with that.

    cheers
    Mitch

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  3. ISS = International Space Station?

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  4. Daniel, yes ISS = International Space Station, if you follow the link to Heavens Above you can get a prediction for when it will next be visible over your location.

    cheers
    Mitch

    ReplyDelete