Owlmere

An observing log. Eyepiece only, no cameras.

These are my notes from the back field: what I pointed the telescope at, what the sky was doing, and what I actually saw — which is not always what the photographs in books would lead you to expect. Most of it comes from an 8-inch Dobsonian at about 54° north, in the north of England, on the edge of the hills.

The log lives in paper notebooks. I am typing it up a few sessions at a time, so the list below is short for now and will fill in backwards. Times are UTC throughout, because that is what the notebooks use.

Sessions

1. 2026-03-26
   The Straight Wall at sunrise Moon, eight days old. Rupes Recta as a dark pencil line; Plato half full of shadow.
2. 2025-10-20
   The Double Cluster, slowly NGC 869 and NGC 884 in one field, and the orange stars in the eastern one.
3. 2025-09-20
   Saturn with its rings nearly shut The night before opposition. The rings a bright needle; Titan easy, Neptune hunted down nearby.
4. 2024-09-03
   M13 and the propeller New Moon, good transparency. The dark lanes finally showed, and NGC 6207 came along too.