The Liverpool Astronomical Society

Hello everyone, sorry I havent been up to the observatory for a while - been on holiday!
Managed to sort a night out at the Centre for Observational Astronomy in the Algarve whilst on holiday. The centre is run by an English couple, Bev and Jan Ewan-Smith and has four domes and  B&B facilities. They have 8", 10", 12" and half-metre reflectors and CCDs and SLRs for imaging.
Despite the moon being at 98% of full, I still managed to view a number of Deep Sky objects. Bev helped me in the main dome with the half-metre reflector and I tell you something - this bloke can star hop! He asked me what I wanted to look at and he could find it in less than 90 seconds!
The sky from so far south was a little different from here in the UK, could see all of scorpius and sagittarius and they dont have many circumpolar constellations like we do. Even with the moon relatively high the light grasp of the telescope enabled me to see the lagoon nebula, the swan/omega nebula, the ring nebula, the dumbell nebula, the supernova remnant the veil nebula and another part called the eastern veil, the cats eye nebula, M13, M92, loads of open clusters, the ET cluster, M31 Andromeda, jupiter and antares - which looked awesome through such a big scope - the colour was so vivid it looked like a ruby. M51 the whirlpool galaxy was a bit disappointing as it was quite washed out by the moon. It was a shame because I would have liked to have tried imaging it. We looked at a few other things but I can't remember what they were. All in all a good nights observing even with the moon so bright! You get a free yearly observation listings book by Paul Money when you stay aswell. Comfy room, friendly and knowledgable hosts, nice fresh food, even arrived just as fresh cakes were coming out of the oven - result! They passed me a few of their newsletters, which I'll bring to the observatory on Wednesday, there's some brilliant Deep Sky photographs taken from COAA on them.
I would recommend COAA to any fellow astronomers!!