Observations in the week of April 20, 2020

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The week of April 20, 2020, close to the new moon, we could again enjoy very nice weather.  We had nice blue skies and warm temperatures during the day.  Also at night, the temperature was still fine and the humidity very low.

Luckily, I could fetch the ground board of my Obsession telescope on Monday.  After installation of the old groundboard, I tested the Argo Navis.  As the motor of the equatorial platform is broken (and a ServoCat is ordered), no tracking would be possible during this week.  On Monday, I started observing, but after 30 minutes, clouds started rolling in.  This short night could already confirm that the Argo Navis worked perfectly.  The external battery was already empty after 30 minutes.  This battery is very old, so it is probably time to replace it (and I need a new one for the Argo Navis anyway).

Tuesday was a fantastic night! I enjoyed a lot of showpieces (lot's of Messier objects).  The main highlights were M 82 (what an amazing cigar-shaped galaxy!), M 51 (with nice spiral arms), M 64 (with the black eye).  I also enjoyed the globular clusters a lot.  In a large aperture telescope, globular clusters are really spectacular (M 3, M 13, M 92, M 56, M 53)!

On Wednesday I collimated my telescope manually.  During twilight, we installed ourselves in the hammock to observe Starlink 6, which was launched only 23 minutes before.  We could see a very bright satellite passing by.  While waiting for Starlink 6, we could observe two other starlink satellite, both around magnitude 1.  It was again a very nice observing night.  I observed till 0:45 and described some objects. 

The Obsession telescope ready for a night of observations.

On Thursday, there were some high clouds, so we only observed the Starlink 6 train.  This time, we could see a lot of satellites very close to each other. 

On Friday, we started again with an observation of Starlink 6.  This time, the train was split and we could see a few minutes after the first train a second train of satellites.  It was a very nice observing night, and I enjoyed some spectacular planetary nebulae (NGC 40 and NGC  6543 - the Cat Eye nebula).

Saturday was another very bright night.  The disadvantage was that the street lights are not shut down during the weekend.  The best SQM value was 20.10, while with the lights out, I measured an SQM value of 20.25. I could do a lot of observations! Highlights where the whale galaxy (NGC 4631) and the hockey stick (NGC 4656). I observed till 1:30. 

On Sunday, I was already very tired of this week with a lot of observing opportunities.  Because the weather was also a bit less good, I only observed some showpieces and stopped early.

The observations I described can be found in DeepskyLog: 

Location: 3370 Roosbeek, België

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