Well, we had gone to Hosahalli on 26th night on the eve of the Ganesha Caturthi, and we had pretty clear skies, especially after 3:00 AM. Shashank has taken pretty good photos, which you can see at http://www.taralaya.org/events
Well, coming to the post topic, we took a look at Ring Nebula (M57) with my 8″ Newtonian Reflector through a 9mm eyepiece and we believe we saw what I’d like to call the grayscale version of the HST Image of the same!!!! We saw the bright ring with the less bright, but not dark, hole in the center. There were wisps coming from the torus too!
And then, we had a case of David Malin image in the morning, when we saw M42, The Great Orion Nebula. It was beautiful with the dark patches running here and there and beautiful filaments. This is one object you can really enjoy with a 8″!!!
Other observations include diffuse galaxies like NGC 891, M 74 etc. and some other interesting stuff.
If you wish to be a part of the observations in future, please keep track of http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/majestic_universe for observation outing related posts. Or do ping BAS at the e-mail ID.
