Worth the Wait: A Clear Night of Pleiades and Planets - Blackheath Observing, Sunday 23 November 2025
- Mike Meynell
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
After last week’s abandoned attempt, it was a relief to arrive on Blackheath and see the sky behaving exactly as promised. Clear from horizon to zenith, and staying that way until around 10pm, it set the scene for one of the most relaxed sessions we’ve had in quite some time.
Compare and contrast - the sky over Blackheath on Sunday 16th November, compared to Sunday 23rd November! Pictures by Phil Benson and Eddie Cantello
It wasn’t a busy night in terms of public turnout – around twenty visitors – but we had eleven volunteers, plenty of telescopes and a wonderfully unhurried pace. People lingered at the eyepieces, asked questions, chatted, compared views, and made the most of the conditions. With fewer people around each telescope, every object had time to breathe.
The Pleiades became the natural starting point. High, bright and unmistakable, they were the first stop for almost everyone. A wide-field refractor made them look particularly good, and several visitors happily spent long stretches just drinking in the view. Saturn followed soon after, generating the usual mixture of disbelief and delight, and as the night progressed we added Jupiter and the Orion Nebula to the list – our first winter-sky targets of the season.
A lot of the evening evolved into a friendly, good-natured rivalry between Yvonne and Phil. Yvonne’s Seestar S50 was quietly collecting deep-sky detail while Phil’s Tak delivered crisp planetary views. Phil won the battle of Saturn and Jupiter without breaking a sweat, but Yvonne more than held her own once we moved on to Andromeda, Orion and the Pleiades, all of which looked superb on her screen. Several visitors took great pleasure in wandering between the two setups and deciding which they preferred.
Images from Seestar Smartscopes. Pictures by Richard Summerfield and Yvonne Jacobs.
Alec spent the opening part of the session negotiating with a new mount that seemed determined to assert its personality, including an unwelcome meridian flip mid-Saturn. It eventually settled, and he joined the general flow of observing. Richard had his pair of Seestars running side by side, feeding live images to tablets – a very engaging setup for both visitors and volunteers.
Tim alternated between a short-tube refractor, which gave an excellent wide view of the Pleiades, and his Mak for planetary work. At one point, while showing the wide-field view, he was informed by a well-meaning visitor that someone “of his age” probably didn’t have the exit pupil to get the best out of such an eyepiece. The comment raised a smile – partly because the view looked excellent regardless, and partly because it was a reminder that even optical theory becomes a topic of lively conversation on the heath.
Tej, who rarely makes Sunday sessions, was in fine form, taking visitors on his usual cheerful tour of the night sky. Hayden and Giorgio roamed with binoculars, which proved very popular for comparing wide-angle views with what the telescopes were delivering.
Amy arrived on her Brompton and spent most of the evening gliding between scopes, chatting to volunteers and visitors. She later mentioned that her toes took quite some time to warm up again, but she still managed to spark several conversations with people who seemed tempted to join the Flamsteed.
It was also great to see Eddie, who we weren’t expecting. He settled himself behind a telescope for a long look at Saturn before trying his hand at the classic iPhone-over-eyepiece challenge. The results were more entertaining than accurate, but it was fun to attempt and added to the light-hearted mood of the evening.
I spent most of the evening imaging the Pleiades – an object I’ve neglected for too long – before moving on to M33 and the Double Cluster. The Orion Nebula defeated my main rig completely; the bright horizon was simply too much for a larger aperture to cope with, while the smartscopes handled it without difficulty.
Clouds finally crept in just after 10pm, and the dampness of the ground began to reveal itself. Even I, who rarely notices such things, found the cold seeping up through my boots. But it didn’t spoil what had been one of our most enjoyable sessions of the season. The smaller crowd gave us the luxury of longer conversations and an easy, unhurried rhythm. Good company, good skies, and the Pleiades shining overhead – not much more you could ask for.
Our next Blackheath event is scheduled for Saturday 13 December 2025, with weather back-up dates of 14, 20 and 21 December.
