This report is several days late, but better late than never. Recently Michigan had a rare clear Saturday night (especially rare for March) with excellent, but cold conditions. Those of you who remember me from AF probably remember that I’m a member of a club here in Michigan and I volunteer at a local observatory whenever they have public nights. Occasionally we will also have “volunteer only” activities there where we do observing sessions with just ourselves. We actually had a
I’m not going to write out descriptions of everything in this report, considering the number of objects I viewed. Our view of the E and SE was not the greatest due to trees blocking some of our views, however, I still managed to bag a total of 100 Messiers in a single night before the combination of trees and a brightening eastern sky ended our marathon session. I primarily used my 22 Nagler for much of the marathon, switching to the 17.3 Delos when more of the globs started swinging around.
Some highlights included M42, which was an absolutely fantastic view that night. The structure in the nebula was readily evident and the 22 Nagler provided a wide, sharp, immersive view while still having comfortable eye relief. M45 I viewed through a set of binoculars, also an awesome view. Later on M13 and M5 were absolutely stunning, I turned my scope towards them several times while waiting for the next objects to swing into view in the east. Transparency seemed better than average as a number of galaxies seemed to show some nice details. The spiral in M51 was readily evident. M82 showed impressive detail in both the 22 Nagler and 17.3 Delos, while M104 was stunning with the dust lane quite evident in both EPs.
Those were just a few highlights of the night, altogether I viewed 102 objects (a personal record for me in a single night). 100 Messiers plus Venus at the beginning of the night and a quick look at the Ghost of Jupiter later during the night. Thanks for reading this report and clear skies to all.
