Observing Report August 22, 2025

Location:  Mactaquac Provincial Park, NB, Canada

Date Time:  2200-0030hrs August 22, 2025

Weather:  Humid, hazy, dew, some moths, no wind to some breeze, a cool 15C and 80% humidity.

Equipment:  Canadian telescopes 80 ed/apo with canon rebel camera attached at prime focus.  Images processed with PhotoShop.

Attendance:  Other campers and myself.  About five came to view through telescope.

Objective:  To observe some of the brighter deep sky objects that are visible from this location and to share viewing with other campers.

Report:

• New Moon was at approximately 0300hrs on this night.  Very dark skies but a haziness caused M31 to be somewhat difficult to find naked eye.
• Showed my camping neighbors around the sky.  Showed M31, M13 and Albireo through big telescope.  Explained about how to use Ursa Major as a guide to find Arcturus and Polaris.  Also, we marveled at the Milky Way which stretched across the entire sky, straight overhead, from the south to the North East into Cassiopeia.
• Viewed and imaged M31 The Andromeda Galaxy.  M110 also popped out in the image, which was unexpected. Dust lanes can also be seen.

• During the evening I decided to image each one of the main square asterism stars in the great square of Pegasus.  Perhaps surprisingly Alpheratz, the brightest star of the square isn't a star of the constellation Pegasus, but the brightest star of the constellation Andromeda.

Alpheratz

Algenib

Markab

Scheat

• While looking at Cassiopeia I thought I would try to capture M103. It is an open star cluster which is near Ruchbah, one of the 'W' asterism stars of Cassiopeia.  The cluster does not appear to show in this image, even after processing to bring out more detail.

Ruchbah

• Around midnight, a bright star rose from behind a big tree in the East.  It was Saturn!  The almost edge on view of the rings was surprising to me.  Spectacular in the big telescope field of view and at least two moons were clearly visible around the gas giant, with maybe more. I find it difficult to tell some of Saturn's moons apart from background stars, as they dont line up and appear quite far away from the planet.  For the image and video, my cellphone was attached to the 32mm eyepiece with an adapter.

Screenshot of Saturn through 8" Meade LX 200

• The last thing I did before stopping for the night, around 0030hrs was to image the Milky Way in the Southern sky, rising from the treeline.  The Milky Way was spectacular all evening.  When imaging zoomed out images without a Moon or very bright planet like Jupiter or Venus, I find it very difficult to focus the camera.  This is why some of the zoomed out images are not in very good focus.  Otherwise, a great night of observing!

The Milky Way.

Comet C/2025 K1 Atlas

Location:  From a driveway near Fredericton, NB, Canada

Date Time:  Aug 16, 2025 2000-0100hrs

Weather: Mostly hazy with passing see-through clouds, this greatly affected images and visual observing, especially deep sky objects and the comet.  At times breezy, and many mosquitos, moths and other bugs, 20C/ humidity 60%. A little dew.  We have been experiencing a drought. 

Attendance:  Edward M and myself.

Equipment:  Meade 8" LX 200 with focal reducer and 32mm eyepiece for visual observing.  Canadian Telescopes 80 ED/APO with Canon Rebel T3 attached for imaging.  Images processed on Photo Shop. 

Objective:  To do some visual observing around the Summer Triangle and to attempt to image a newly discovered comet, C/2025 K1 Atlas, which was reported to be near one of the main asterism stars in Ophiuchus.

Report:

• Many of the deep sky objects & comet that I tried to locate and view/image were greatly affected by the see-through haze & clouds.  Sometimes M31 was visible with unaided eye, but sometimes it wasn't.  Same goes for Albireo and many of the comet images. One image it's there, in another it isn't. Camera/telescope focus issues were also a factor. When the reddish orange, waning crescent Moon began to rise through the trees after midnight, it was half covered in clouds.
• As we were observing, we seen many meteors. Over a dozen between us.  Faint, very fast moving streaking pin pricks of light.  I observed two at the same time almost moving at right angles to each other under Cassiopeia (which was in the NE sky), while trying to locate M31 with unaided eye.  No Perseids were seen.  No smoke trails seen.  All were very fast, faint, in all parts of the sky moving in seemingly different directions,
• We observed a train of satellites moving in the south-east direction.
• Observed visually, with big telescope, Albireo(Double Star), M13(Hercules Cluster), M31(Andromeda Galaxy) and made an unsuccessful attempt to view M57(The Ring Nebula).  M31 & M13 were greatly affected by hazy conditions, but were visible.  The double star was not affected.

The Hercules Cluster (M13)

The Ring Nebula (M57) halfway between brighter Sulafat & fainter Sheliak.

• About halfway through the observing session, I made my first attempt at imaging the recently discovered comet, C/2025 K1 Atlas, which was nicely placed high up in the south-western sky.  Located very conveniently for imaging, unlike most of the other targets, which were nearly straight over-head.  This comet was reported to be near a brightish star in Ophiuchus, 11.9 magnitude, which is very close to the limit of my capabilities to image.  This means it's very faint, too faint to see in my 8" telescope, even under perfect seeing conditions.

Comet is to the right of the bright star, near center of image.

• Over the course of the evening of imaging and observing, many targets were almost directly over-head, I had issues keeping the camera focused. The incline of the telescope caused this. I used a number of stars including Dubhe in Ursa Major as a bright star to focus on.

Dubhe.  Glow surrounding this star in the image indicates the haziness of the sky conditions.