Franco Skies

I took my 10x50 bins with me on holiday, I'd wanted to take my little scope, but there just wasn't room, so that I could, hopefully get some observing in, both, being further south, and with luck darker skies.

Well, both proved true very quickly. The skies were so dark, that the milky way was very visible directly overhead without any dark adaptation, and I could see no hint of LP anywhere around. Of course, the quantity of trees didn't help with seeing the horizon, but they were quite dark trees.

On the 18th, I could just about make out Ursa Major's tail through the trees, it was a little tricky to work out my bearings, but this got me sorted. Anyway, just a bit of sky watching. Throughout the evening, I saw 4 Perseids, a Tumbling Iridium (at least that's what I think it was), a very odd sight, but I don't see it being anything else. The track kept fading in and out. A few minutes later, a real bright Meteorite tore across the sky, and a bunch of other satellites joined in the fun.

The following night I got my bins out and had a good nose around. Easily finding the Coathanger, having a wander along the Milky Way through Cygnus. A little later, through a gap in the trees I spotted an odd Teapot shaped grouping of stars, and wondered whether that could actually be Sagitarius... A quick check in the books, planetarium and TL@O proved this to be correct. I had a good wander around here. The two globs M22 and M28 were easily discernible as small blobs. I could make out M8 and I think NGC6530. M21 was another easily seen target, and I think I may have seen M20 (or that might have been wishful thinking)... And moving higher up M23, 24 and 25. Wow, what a busy area that teapot is.

Anyway, most of the following nights were spent looking at the same thing, and trying to find and prove to myself that I had indeed seen these targets. I also shared the bins with friends and family, so they could see what I was looking at, mounting them on my camera tripod.

I also tried to capture some images of the teapot, both a widefield with the 18-55 lens



and a bit closer in with the Nifty Fifty