Another clear day, blue skies since dawn.

Venus and Mercury were first again then, while I was waiting to get a polar alignment I got a fantastic sight my first Iridium flare cross overhead at 17:50 headed due North, I saw it as it reached maximum brightness which appeared to be far brighter than Venus, it then faded and appeared as a typically dim satellite.

I then spent some time looking at M42 using the 40mm EP, lots of nebulosity could be seen quite clearly and the stars of the Trapezium were easily separated even at this low power (25x mag). This eyepiece really shows the advantage of the large aperture of the scope, most people seem to want to instantly go for a maximum mag for their scope but usually with a huge loss in image quality.

Next I tried yet again to find M81 and M82, still no result.

By 8.30pm it was getting a tad too cold, and I have more work to do so will try to take another look later.

Mitch

Managed to spend some time outside last night from about 8.00pm on, had a great session taking photos but suffered from wind again, the scope did I mean!

Tried taking some of the Pleiades but the stars kept coming out looking like dumbells......



This I think is due to the scope rocking in the wind, there was only a slight breeze but it seems that is enough to sway the OTA from side to side, I can't think of another reason for this, but if you know better then please let me know!

By the time that I'd failed to get a decent long exposure of the Pleiades I noticed that Orion had risen. Here's another shot of M42, a bit more detail than my first effort so I'm quite pleased with the result.....



Canon EOS350D 35mm equiv focal length = 1.6 metres, 160 seconds ISO400.

At last a photo of M42....



Quite pleased for a first attempt.

Canon EOS350D prime focus with Skywatcher 200mm Newtonian 15 seconds at ISO:800

Another attempt.....