It’s been a long time hasn’t it, and honestly observational astronomy has taken a back seat. This is a post to fill in what has been happening. Health Health issues with my shoulder and, more importantly last year, with my leg have meant that I couldn’t shift my usual heavy kit. That limited the kind of observing I could do. So it was mostly lunar and double star sight-seeing with small scopes and a manual alt-az mount on a photographic tripod.

It’s been a while hasn’t it, so I’ve decided that a short update on my progress with the Herschel 400 – or 281 since I can’t see anything below 0º declination – is in order now that the season’s drawn to a close with the approach of Summer Solstice. Sadly it seems that I’m down to only fifteen more open clusters, three globular clusters, a pair of emission nebulae and a solitary planetary nebula to observe.

And now I’ve forgotten to post through March… which is a shame because it was a huge improvement over February. Not only a big uptick in the quantity of observing opportunities, but lots of variety in my observing diet too. Both this month and the last have started with some Lunar observing. I’m starting to take this increasingly seriously just as the Moon is due to sink lower in my sky until it disappears behind the house until Autumn… still you have to start sometime, and I’ve decided now with the Charles Wood’s Lunar 100.

You may remember way back in 2014 I wrote about Charles Messier and his list of comet-like objects. I also mentioned that I’d started tracking them down with binoculars, and that was a while ago, so what’s happened since? I’m still working to my usual leisurely pace, but I’ve collected good observations of 60 of them now. This year would be a great time to finish this project since it’s the 200th anniversary of Charles’ death.

This is my third year as an astronomical observer, and I’ve decided the time has come to kick off a few projects aimed at improving my practical skills. Observing open clusters. The Astronomical League have some fantastic material and programs that are available online, even to non-members. I wish British astronomical organisations were more like their American counterparts (a discussion for another day). Anyway, the program that’s caught my imagination is the Open Cluster Observing Program which provides a list of 125 objects from various catalogues, most of which I’ve never encountered.