Bug eyed from getting up at 3 a.m. and a six hour drive, I set up for an evening's observing on the eve of the eclipse. Orion was rising majestically over a tree, and the Andromeda galaxy (M31) was an easy naked eye smudge to the North....the first time I've detected it using Mark 1 eyeball. So....I set my telescope up for some deep sky viewing. It had to be my first target, and what a sight. In a 1° field, it spanned the entire field, and the disc was just visible 1.5° off axis. A couple of well placed dustbin lids had turned Tshipise into a fine observing site.
Subsequent stops were through the Pleiades (with the nebulosity around Merope easily visible), 47 Tuc (a difficult naked eye object) and the Magellanic clouds, including the Tarantula nebula - all stunning. We really do need to do some dark sky observing.
So then we looked at M42. Oh my word... previously, I'd seen faint greens near the centre of the nebula, but this time I saw faint pink in the outer reaches, and blue towards the middle. I was like a kid who gets to open their Christmas presents a day early.
Well - I guess everyone's heard how nature conspired to produce three layers of cloud, right above the centre line. What are the chances of a hole in all of them, so that they line up with the sun? (I get something like zero - but it happened!)
Has anyone not got plans for the great eclipse in Libya?
Clear, dark skies to you all
Bruce Dickson