Stargazing in Furzehill in Dorset

“It’s better to be lucky than good.”  A quote attributed to many and certainly felt appropriate when checking the forecast in the days leading up to our now annual long weekend away in the country.  The UK had been basking in an incredible run of clear skies and this look set to continue for our upcoming trip.  A very fortunate outcome considering this short vacation was booked months ago and could have easily been quite different given the vagaries of UK weather.

This time we selected a 6-bedroom property with indoor pool and large gardens with plenty to keep a very active 4-year-old happy on the edge of Furzehill in Dorset, situated less than 2km from the small town of Wimborne.  Once again, we hired private chef Philippa Davis to look after all our culinary needs and this location really excited her as she hails from Dorset and was able to share lots of the wonderful local produce with us during our stay.

Though the moon was an 8-day old waxing gibbous on arrival day and would already be a big source of light pollution in the sky which would only get worse on subsequent nights, I was not about to let the promise of cloudless skies pass me by and I managed to cram my Takahashi FC-100DC, a selection of eyepieces and mount into the car.  The promise of a Bortle 4 sky (20.68 mag./arc sec² according to lIghtpollutionmap.info) even with the moon in the sky is vastly superior to my home class-9 sky in central London.

With perfect forecasts for Friday night, I decided this would be my main night for astronomy, though I also slipped in a second shorter session on Sunday evening as well.  Conditions were good with a small amount of high cloud in the north earlier in the session, but this was swept away by a constant breeze (which also kept any risk of dew at bay) and a few small light domes around the horizon but nothing intrusive, especially with a magnitude -10 moon in the southwest.

To keep things compact, I only took four 1.25 eyepieces, the 24mm Panoptic providing a 2.1^o field at 31x magnification, 10mm Delos (0.98^o / 74x), 7mm Nagler Type 6 (0.75^o / 94x) and the 3-6mm Nagler Zoom (0.39^o-0.20^o / 123x-247x).  I also had UHC and OIII filters.  Rounding out the equipment was the SkyWatcher AZ GTI mount.  Somewhat unusual for me as I learned to star hop before GoTo was really a thing (unless you had buckets of cash and as a teenager with money from a Christmas job for my first scope, I certainly did not) and I tend to use manual Alt-Az mounts, but I had purchased the GTI on a whim with vouchers from another AstroCamp pub quiz win several years earlier and then never used it.  Knowing you could unlock the axes for manual movement gave me the fallback that if it was unreliable I could revert to my tried-and-tested approach I figured I would give it go.

No target list has been prepared ahead of the trip so this evening was driven by what I thought of and what I believed I might be able to see with a bright moon in the sky.  Certainly, some of the extragalactic denizens I visited were a game of detection rather than teasing out subtle low contrast features.

I always miss the winter constellations after they sink towards the western horizon with the arrival of Spring.  Orion was already partially obscured by trees in the garden so a final look at M42 was not on the cards, but I could not resist some of the showpiece open clusters found in this region of the sky even with a bright Moon situated in Gemini only about 10-degree below the twins Castor and Pollux.  It is fair to say the moonlight stole some of their lustre, but the views were still pleasing.

One of my favourite open clusters found anywhere in the sky, M35 was my first target of the night.  I was not sure what to expect given the Moon was 10-degrees away and that certainly impacted the view.  I kept the cluster compressed using the 24mm but the distinctive to my eye figure-eight structure was there with several streams of stars radiating away.  While I was not looking for it, nearby NGC 2158 did not draw my eye as it often does when viewing this cluster, lost to brighter background sky.

I then hopped over to Auriga for the three Messier open clusters which were thankfully still above the top branches of the large oak tree to the west.  First up was the Pinwheel, M36, though I never understood this colloquial name.  To me, the small 12’ cluster appeared to contain several small loops of stars, though 4 brighter members appeared to form a small cross near the centre at 74x.

Moving in catalogue order, M37 which is an actual discovery of Messier as Le Gentil somehow missed the brightest of the three Auriga clusters having found M36 and M38 in 1749.  A wonderful view in any scope, the cluster was easily resolved with multiple streams of stars seeming to map out a series of dark lanes that weave through the cluster, with a wondeful topaz coloured jewel near the middle of the cluster.

I kept M38 tight with the 24mm and noted an ellipse of stars just off centre with several arms of stars streaming away from this structure.

The constellation that harbours it may have been washed out by the moon, but M44, around 25^o west of the Moon suffered no such diminished view as my prior four targets.  Proximity to Earth very much in my favour.  The box-like central feature was an immediate draw to my eye before my gaze widened to the dozens of stars that appear to swarm around the central hive feature.

Before leaving this area of the sky for a region less impacted by the Moon, I thought I would have a go at C39 (NGC2392), the planetary nebula known as the Eskimo.  I did not fancy my chances being so close to our nearest celestial neighbour so slipped in the UHC before having the GTI slew over to it.  However, it was immediately obvious non-stellar object at 31x, and I upped the magnification to 95x but was unable to decern any structural details.

I had the GoTo swing the scope round to the north, well away from the Moon to one of my favourite regions of the sky that harbours Cassiopeia and all its celestial wonders it contains (almost 10% of all know open clusters reside within the queen’s borders despite being only 25^th by area among all the 88 constellations).

First up was the last object on Messier’s original catalogue, M103.  The characteristic isosceles triangle shape of this small cluster looked great at 74x, almost like a celestial dart that had been fired by a heavenly hunter but missed nearby Ruchbah (Delta Cassiopeiae).

Switching from the last official entry in one catalogue to the first in another, Caldwell 1 (NGC 457 – The ET Cluster) is my favourite open cluster and I visit it almost every time I observe.  The gears of the GoTo barely whirled to traverse the three-degree separation of the two clusters.  The two eyes of the friendly alien who just wants to go home blazed away while the faint stick figure outline was easy to trace out against the darker sky of this part of the heavens.

Sticking with Patrick Moore, my next target was C8 (NGC 559).  The best view came with the 10mm Delos at 74x.  A small triangular wedge of stars sits at the centre of the cluster with a faint loop of stars shaping the border of the cluster, all against the faint mist of unresolved starlight of many of the dimmer cluster members.

Caldwell 10 (NGC 633) was my next target, but having switched back down to the 24mm, meant I also bagged nearby NGC 654 as well.  C10 is brighter and larger than M103 which given I could also fit in the field of the 24mm with 633 and 654, it is a mystery how this one did not make the comet hunter’s list.  At 74x, three core clumps of stars connected with faint strings of stars traced out a “U” shape

My last cluster in Cassiopeia was beautiful Caroline’s Rose.  Far from the best view I have had of this cluster, but the tight twisting loops of stars with no bright members to distract the eye traced out the shape of the flower mostly closely associated with romance.  I always prefer the view of this cluster at low power as it keeps the cluster compressed and makes the “petals” more obvious so stuck with the 24mm Panoptic.

I couldn’t resist a quick hop across the border to Perseus and one of my favourite DSOs found anywhere in the night sky, the wonderful Double Cluster.  NGC 869 and 884 were just about visible naked eye with averted vision so I knew the view would be good.  The twin open clusters were nice framed with some wide space around them in the 24mm.  The little horseshoe at the centre of one and the “Y” asterism in the other immediately drawing my eye and putting a smile on my face.

Next up were a couple of the Milky Way’s older residents in globular cluster M3 and M5.  I usually start my journey to both from Arcturus in Bootes, but here it was just a simple couple of button presses and off the scope went to bring the target into view.  Starting with M3 using the 24mm, the cluster displayed a stellar like core surrounded by gradually fading halo.  Switching to the 10mm and 74x, the view was enhanced with an expansion of the unresolved core and a great deal of mottling and granulation across the halo which faded to black to delineate the edge of the cluster.

Though lower in the sky, I preferred the view of M5.  The core was more intense at both 74x and 95x and the halo appeared to have greater texture.  I also felt I was seeing two stubby extensions of stars sweeping away beyond the halo on opposite sides of the cluster.

It was early April, its galaxy season.  Got to try a few.  That was my thinking, and it was time to leave the confines of the Milky Way.  But that did mean heading back towards the Moon and the brighter part of the sky and possibly an exercise in futility.  Fortunately, it was not quite that bad, but it was mostly an exercise in detection rather than teasing subtle low contrast features out with averted vision (with one or two pleasant surprises).

First up, the Leo Triplet of M65, M66 and NGC 3628.  At around 60^o from the Moon, the sky was still noticeably brighter than to the north.  We joke this is the “Leo Doublet” in London thanks to the light pollution and it was almost that here as well.  All contained with the field of the 10mm Delos, none of these island universes were putting on a good show and NGC 3628 which eluded Messier was pretty tough and only barely there with averted vision.  M65 showed its more oblique orientation compared to M66 with a rhombus shaped core and slight evidence of a dust lane with averted vision.  M66 was a virtually featureless ghostly blob by comparison with a stellar like core the only aspect I could see embedded in a feeble glow of its small halo.

A little disappointed but not quite prepared to give up on galaxies just yet, I moved onto one of the most famous of all galaxies, the Whirlpool, M51.  This galaxy and the next two were the first objects where it was pleasing to be using GoTo.  At an altitude of 70^o, and predilection of straight-through finders, my neck and knees were thankful I was not in master level yoga position to find it.  I have had some very impressive views of this conjoined pair of galaxies in some fairly small scopes but today was not one of those days.  Both cores were visible but that was about it.

Tail slightly between my legs after sequential mediocre views, I decided to give it one more try.  Fortunately, M81 and M82 sailed into view to rescue this galactic endeavour.  Both galaxies offered very pleasing views.  M81 showed a tight core surrounded by a delicate oval of countless unresolved stars.  With averted vision I detected some hints of spiral structure in the disc.  The irregular cigar shape of M82 showed mottling across the face of the galaxy.

A gentle breeze back in my sails, I decided to continue with galaxies and headed over to Virgo and the behemoth that is M87.  Containing several trillion stars and around 15,000 globular clusters (not sure I would attempt one my challenges to view all the GCs in a constellation in a single session if I lived in that galaxy!) this one stood out easily against the slightly brighter sky.  The galaxy did a passable impression of unresolvable globular at 74x (without the granulation and mottling that makes globular clusters so interesting to view) with its oval disc which brightened towards the centre, though with no identifiable core.

It was hard to pass up an opportunity to have a crack at Markarian’s Chain.  I dropped down to 24mm panoptic and manually nudged the scope to centre M84 and M86 which were in the same wider field of view before switching back to the 10mm.  It was clear pretty quickly this would be an exercise in spotting them rather than glimpsing fine details.  Both M84 and M86 where checked off before casting my eyes eastwards in the same field to try to observe the Eyes Galaxies (NGC 4438 and 4435).  I just about managed one with averted vision and I suspect it was the smaller of the two, NGC 4435.

Using the slowest slew speed of the mount, I placed the one eye I could just about see on the field stop of the Delos, but only one more galaxy was confidently visible, which was end of the chain NGC 4477.  A couple of others might have momentarily triggered a retinal response, but it could well have been averted imagination.

The keystone of Hercules was well up to the east now the clock had ticked past midnight, so it was back to the Milky Way and two summertime showpieces in globular clusters M13 and M92.  Starting with the “Great Globular in Hercules,” M13 showed plenty of mottling across the face of the cluster at 95x, with a couple of short tails appearing to sweep away from the main body.  The “propeller” feature I often spot in M13 was not visible, something I associated with less than perfect transparency.  Unusually for me, I found the view of M92 far more engaging during this session.  A far more compressed appearance and brighter core really drew my eye, while showing some granulation across the face of the cluster at the same 95x magnification.

The next five targeted objects split their affiliation between the Messier and Caldwell catalogues and my UHC was pulled out of the bag for most of them.  First up was Caldwell 2 (NGC 40), known as the Bowtie Nebula.  Once the scope had stopped slewing to target, it was hard to pick out from the field stars in the 24mm until I popped in the UHC, as it appeared quite stellar.  Once centred, I up the magnification to 74x and was presented with a slightly oval tiny disc which extended just off the central star.

Leaving the UHC in place, I next dialled in C6 in Draco (NGC 6543), better known as the Cat’s Eye Nebula.  One of the most famous of planetary nebula thanks that beautiful photo captured by HST 30-years ago, my view was not quite so spectacular! But still quite nice.  The central star at 123x was surrounded by a very tight ring of slightly brighter material when using averted vision, all sitting on top of a dim disc of uniform material which extended very slightly wider than the brighter ring.

Switching back to Messier, the Ring Nebula was next on the hit list now that Lyra had risen well above the murky horizon.  I stayed with the 6mm of the Zoom for the slew over to the celestial harp, though the GTI failed to place it in such a narrow field, this is one object where I know exactly where to place the crosshairs of the finder.  The classic smoke ring was obvious along with one or two “knots” of brightness which showed up with averted vision.

Back to Caldwell next and UHC removed for a reflection nebula C4 (NGC 7023), better known as the Iris Nebula in Cepheus.  At 74x, the 7^th magnitude star at the heart of the nebula was enrobed in several arcing bands of material along with a distinctive elongated bar that ran N-S which extended around 10’ in length.

While it was still a little low at 12^o above the horizon, I thought I might as well have a first look of the year at M27, the Dumbell Nebula.  The UHC certainly helped here, but the apple core of brighter material was teased out of the thick atmosphere near the horizon.

It was around 1:30am at the point and I was beginning to run out of steam after a 3-hour drive to Dorset earlier in the day and some swimming as demanded by the 4-year-old as soon as we arrived.  However, I could not help but notice Ophiuchus rising above the house in the south-east and I decided to take in a couple additional Messier globular clusters in M10 and M12.

Messier 10 appeared to have a slightly triangular core at 74x surrounded by smooth circular halo.  M12 appeared slightly smaller than its nearby cousin.  At 95x, the cluster had a mottled halo.

After more than three and half hours I decided to call it a night and get some rest, happy in the knowledge that the clear skies were forecast to last beyond our entire stay, and I would hopefully be able to bag some more targets on another night.