I knew from the
Manchester Birding Forum thread entitled
'Jupiter and its Moons' that
Paul Richardson had an interest in astronomy and when
George Pike told me that he had always wanted to see
Andromeda I saw an opportunity for encouraging Paul to get his telescopes out of the back of the wardrobe and blow off the dust for a trip out with me tagging along as well. After all, I had been developing my night sky photography skills recently too.
We discussed various locations but the
Forest of Bowland always seemed to be the best chance of finding some
Dark Skies within a reasonable driving distance. For viewing of night sky objects, clear skies and a moonless night, or as close as possible is needed. We had to wait for quite a while before the conditions were right.
Tuesday 1st October proved to be the night and we set off in the dark at 7:30pm with pretty cloudy skies, trusting that the Met Office app forecasting clear skies would prove to be correct. Fortunately, for once, it did. We headed up the M61 motorway and then across on the A59 to Clitheroe and up to Waddington where we parked in small lay-by along the B6478 Slaidburn Road. It was here that I took the
'Road to Waddington' photo (shown above and below) that we're currently using as a cover photo on out
Leigh Astro Society Facebook group here:
I quite like this photo but I do hope to revisit the lay-by and take a better shot with the full arc of the road showing in it. It was quite amazing how much traffic there was late at night on this B road.
Our first target was actually
Saturn using Paul's big
Celestron 8" reflector telescope. Unfortunately it was very low in the sky and in the same direction as the light pollution from Preston, but we could make out the tell-tale oval shape of the rings quite easily. No photographs though as it was too small and distant for my camera lenses.
Next was
Andromeda and Paul used a smaller telescope to look at this distant galaxy as he was little unhappy with the performance of his large telescope, saying that it might need servicing. It was great to have my first ever view of our nearest galaxy, at only 2537 million light years away and which Paul said he could even see with his naked eye! Well, having spent a lifetime staring into cathode ray tubes and more recently LED flat screen monitors, I couldn't see it without using first binoculars and then Paul's telescope. However, it was actually George's Swarovski bird spotting scope that gave us the best views on this particular occasion for some reason. I managed to grab some poor but just about recognisable shots shown above and below.
After that we spent some time looking at the
Pleiades and
Hyades star clusters with
Aldebaran at their feet as well as a few other constellations such as the easily recognisable
Ursa Major (the Big Dipper or Plough), the 'W' shape of
Cassiopeia and the square shape which forms the main part Pegasus. Oh, and the
Northern Cross too.
Thanks must go to Paul for his knowledge of astronomy and the night sky without whom George and I would never have known where to look for and see Andromeda, Saturn and many other features. In fact we would have been almost totally in the dark (hehe!).
Son this evening
Paul was duly elected
Chairman of the newly formed
Leigh Astrophenomical Society, which was later renamed to
Astronomolgical and finally just
Astro - being from the Leigh Ornithological Society we all know how important it is to keep your Society's name short and sweet!
We finished off this excellent evening with some arty-farty light painting by George ....
.... whilst Paul did his best '
Beast of Bowland' impression - you wouldn't want to meet him on a dark night!
