Observing report: Pluto
Date: Sat/Sun 1/2 June 2002
Location: Club dark sky site on the Dengie Peninsular, Essex
Telescope: VC200L (8" cat reflector) with SS2k

The evening started off badly with strips of low cloud appearing in the west covering  Venus & 
Jupiter. As the planets set so the clouds disappeared.

Pluto was my main target for the night. I had printed a finder chart using Skymap Pro. Once it was 
properly dark I used SS2k to get to the right region of the sky. It was quite easy to recognise a 
pattern of 4 stars near the predicted position of Pluto and hence see where Pluto should be. As 
expected nothing was visible. I had started using my favourite eyepiece, a 22mm super wide 
Lanthanum but as the background was not very dark I x2 barlowed it which gave better contrast. 
Still no Pluto. For about half an hour I tried averted vision, shutting my eyes completely for a time 
before viewing and avoided using even the dimmest of red lights as much as possible as it had a 
distinct effect on what I could see. Eventually a faint tiny point of light came into view for just a 
moment and then go. This happened a few times. According to Skymap Pro there was a star of 
magnitude 14.2 quite close to Pluto (mag 13.8) so I decided that I could not be sure to have seen 
Pluto unless I could see the pair of them at the same time. They were also in line with a bright star 
TYC5651-1680-1 mag 6.96. After about another 15 mins or so the two did briefly pop into view. This 
happened about 5 or 6 times in the next half hour. So I feel justified in claiming to have seen Pluto.

Earlier in the night I had looked at the Swan Nebula (Omega Neb M17) which was recognisable but 
only just. After finding Pluto I had another look at the Swan and it was wonderful, as clear as any 
picture I have seen (e.g. in O'Meara - the Messier Objects). Other memorable objects that night 
were a very small but red Mars (under the earlier cloud), A distinctly blue Uranus and Neptune, a 
last look at Ikeya-Zhang comet and also two very bright passovers of the ISS. The Milky Way was 
the clearest I have seen with the dark gap in the middle as it leads South through Sagitta & 
Sagittarius easy naked eye. Finally the night finished off with a beautiful last quarter Moon rising 
over the Sea and shortly after that dawn approaching.

A wonderful night.



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