Perfect Night

Pleiades on Wednesday Night with the brighter stars Atlas, Pleiane, Alcyone and Merope - about half of the Pleiades open cluster.

Wednesday night brought almost perfect conditions, I set up both scopes to see what I could capture. Found the Dumbell Nebula and Ring Nebula with no problem using my Skywatcher 130m, tracking seemed good, so I tried to image the Dumbell. In the eyepiece there it was clear as a bell (dumbell!!) but with the camera it just ain't there...weird! The Pleiades was in full view so tried an image with the ST80 and focal reducer to capture the whole of the open cluster. Trouble is Pleiades is quite large and could only manage part of it. A beautiful sight visually with the ST80!
Bought a copy of 'Universe' by DK, a superb book with an incredible amount of information about the science involved and lovely images.
My plans for this week are to image my first comet. The SWAN COMET is currently in Hercules very near M13 and is visually quite bright, conditions look good during this week so watch this space!