20 minutes between the clouds.

At 9 it was cloudy...
At 10 it was clear... but a quick check around showed clouds on west and northern horizons, at least what I can see of them. I wanted to get the rig out for some more time on M31 and M45 but with those clouds... no point... So I set the 15x70's on the tripod and stepped out for a whirlwind style wander around the sky...

First off Jupiter.. Riding high, with a trail of three moons down to the left, although, checking the charts... it was actually all 4 but the 15x70's couldn't seperate 2 of them.. Io in close, Europa and Ganymede, appearing to be one and Callisto way out... A very pretty, the king with his train of servants...

Anyway, using Stellarium, I went looking for Neptune... I found the 3 stars in a line, a quick double cross check (that's looking at 2 sources, rather than a double cross...) and there it was... Netpune... yay... Another planet on the list... Only one left to find.. I had a look around in Capricorn for the other M's but I couldn't find them.

So instead, I turned around and went to remind myself what some of the other sights looked like, that I haven't looked at in a long time... First up... gotta be M31... very clear, a bright core and a faint wisp/hint of something around the core... although my mind might be filling in the blanks for me... I had a good look for M33 too, but again, couldn't find it. Perhaps I should've referred to a book, but as I didn't have one with me ...

I thought to myself, that one of my favourite, yet really odd sights would be very clear now. And it was... Kembles cascade, a line of about 20 stars leading into an open cluster, NGC 1502. Lovely... (it's easy to find... follow the top of Cassie sort of straight down, alongside Perseus, about double the distance of the width of the top of the W).

Then onto the Double... A wonderful sight, but Bins really do bring this out nicely... I swear I could see some reds in the stars... I don't think that's due to odd reflections from my red head torch either... it was only 3 or 4 stars showing it... From there down to Mirfak and the Association... I previously would centre on Mirfak, but I discovered tonight how much I'd been missing... By putting Mirfak to the upper edge of the FOV, I found so many more stars than before... WOW!!!..

From there I hopped across to M34... another one I found easily... nowhere near as impressive as the double, but still a lovely little cluster. Back down into Auriga... I didn't fine the M's but the conditions were deteriorating, but I did find Mr Smiley and the Little Fish. Back up to Cassie (just sort of meandering) there are so many stars, but I found M103... Then NGC457, The Owl cluster. I swung around a little, hopped up from the pan of the dipper, and found M81 and M82... A pair of very faint smudges in the bins... Glad I found them though, I normally have a lot of difficulty doing that.

Then I turned around, found the coathanger... had a quick nose at Lyra... although 15x70's don't reveal very much and drifted up the Milky Way...

That's when the clouds really started making their presence felt (I'd worked around them till then) and gave up and came in...

Only 20 minutes, but well spent and I enjoyed it. I hope to have many evenings with the 15x70s gadding about, whilst the rig is running.