Aurora Borealis

Round here, if you see the skying flickering all different colours, you just assume its the former ICI companies malfunctioning yet again.

 

Probably because I took my camera but there were no Northern Lights last night. Typical!

Harry......I spent ten minutes looking at the Winter Hexagon at 2am this morning, as clear as a bell!

 

Hi Sheal it would be really clear last night . On Stargazing they used the Winter Hexagon as signposts to other objects. Apparently that area of the sky has a few galaxys which can be seen with good binoculars. I have never been confident enough to walk around late at night with binoculars , it may get people talking
I can't find a good website showing the winter hexagon galaxies
Are the M objects on the star map a few posts up galaxies ?

 

If you have a modern phone, you can get apps that tell you what's what. Check this out:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lavadip.skeye&hl=en_GB

Or this one looks good too:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.escapistgames.starchart&hl=en

 

Harry......I've not thought to use binoculars to look at the night sky. I can see so much here without from my garden as the street lights are all off by 12.30am and with very little industry on the island it is pitch black outside.

I know very little about stargazing unfortunately so wouldn't know what the 'M' objects are. They could be motorways!

 

....wish they'd turn them off round here

 

I'm a bit sceptical that it is worth looking at Galaxies with binoculars ... apart from Andromeda, just so that you have "seen it" and know where it is. You can just about make it out with the naked eye. I (and people I drone on to about it) am blown away by the fact that the light from Andromeda took over 2.5 million light years to get here. Even in my 12" reflector its just a fuzzy object, and less bright (which is all of them!!) galaxies are just a "small fuzzy object" of not particular note, unless it becomes a pretty serious hobby. However, Andromeda is the same "width" in my telescope's eyepiece as the Seven Sisters; they are about 450 light years away, so it is hard to comprehend how wide Andromeda is given the same angle of arc but extending from 450 light years out to 2.5 million. Width of Andromeda is about 4,500 light years

Jupiter is in the evening sky just now, and you will be able to make out its moons with binoculars. Depending on how many are hiding behind / in front of the planet you should be able to see up to 4 moons with binoculars.

They vary. They are objects of interest recorded by French astronomer Charles Messier in 1771. Of course he didn't know what they were, at that time, just that they were "relatively bright" and of interest Nice thumbnails of each object on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_object
In the Apparent Magnitude column smaller, positive, numbers are easier to see than larger positive numbers. For negative numbers then bigger negative numbers are increasingly bright - only things like the Moon and Sun have negative numbers for brightness though )

Mostly star clusters rather than Galaxies in the Messier List I think. Star Clusters, particularly the Globular ones, are worth a look in binoculars. You might need to use averted-glaze (look out of the corner of your eye) to see much detail. Best of the crop is the Globular Cluster in Hercules (M13)

An APP on your phone probably best (it will tell you what you are pointing it at ), but good star charts published each month here:
http://www.skymaps.com/downloads.html
they have the easier-to-see M-objects marked.