I finally got my act together, and so did the weather, and tonight I went outside with my 8SE / NEQ6. The skies were relatively clear, just some threatening cloud to the East over the sea but I don't think it ever made land, then just the occasional patch of cloud which came and went fairly quickly.

Having not really done anything other than binoculars and one session with my ST80, I had to go back to Turn Left At Orion as I had little idea of what to aim for. I flicked to the Autumn section and worked my way through it, page by page; to my surprise, I was finding most of the targets relatively easily, experience shining through there, only one really gave me trouble and that was the first one - M15; this was just too low and in the light pollution from the pub, I had a good go but just couldn't see anything apart from the brightest stars so low over the roofs. I skipped several other targets down that way, South East of the Great Square of Pegasus, not much point in trying under those conditions.

Had a look at M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, but it didn't seem that impressive, perhaps due to the amount of light pollution from either side of our garden. Annoyingly, neighbours on one side seem to have a security light on full beam all night until 11pm, most annoying, and they're not even out in the yard.

Almach was my next target, I had actually found this when scouting for M31 and had a quick look then, but found it again for a longer look. Very pretty large blue star with a smaller companion, looks great in the 8SE with 25mm eyepiece.

Mesarthim is a double star I don't remember looking at previously, very uniform size and easy to see, relatively easy to find too.

Took me a while to find Eta Cassiopeiae in Cassiopeiae, a double star in the W. At this point I noticed the dew was getting to be quite thick, and my finder scope wasn't showing much; it turned out that it was dewed up at both ends, the eyepiece end seemed to mist up just from my breath or my warm face being near it, and I discovered that my dew heater controller had failed on one of the channels. I switched the cables over to channel 2, and it started to un-dew on the finder scope (and my main scope, which had been without a working dew heater for at least 30 minutes, possibly longer, and was beginning to seriously dew up). Found it in the end, a nice double star in the 8SE.

I decided to give the open clusters in Cassiopeia a miss tonight, that seemed like a night's viewing all of it's own.

M34 threw me a bit due to the rotation of the picture in the book, I was looking between Kappa and Algol for a while, but as soon as I realised my mistake I found M34 straight away, a lovely open cluster.

Finally, the last target for Autumn in the book, The Double Cluster NGC 869 and NGC 884 in Perseus. Found this relatively easily by following the left most stroke of the W in Cassiopeia South, it was just visible to the naked eye and appeared as a dark smudge in my finder scope (which was still half fogged up with dew). It didn't quite all fit into my 25mm so gave it a go with the 38mm wide eyepiece, which displayed it beautifully; both clusters were just in the frame, sharp points of light. The book says that some are red in appearance, and I think I could definitely see this for some of them, although sometimes suggestion goes a long way!

I wanted something good to finish the night on so I looked out for Jupiter, caught a quick glimpse of the Pleiades but it was best viewed in binoculars. Jupiter was still behind my neighbour's hedge at 10pm so I decided to go inside for a while to warm up. Came back out about 10.30 and it was just clearing the hedge. The 10mm was not too bad tonight, I could definitely make out three distinct bands but the image was slightly dim and indistinct, not the best of seeing conditions. In the 25mm eyepiece it was nice and bright, and I could also appreciate the three bands and three of the moons too. I fancy I could just about make out a dark spot on one of the bands, not sure if it was the great red spot.

Not too bad for a first time out for a long time. I will be looking at the dew heater situation, it may just be a loose connection in the controller, or maybe something has burned out. I also forgot that I wanted to make a dew shield for my finder scope, so will have to look for suitable thin material to make that out of. Something to keep me busy until the next time I get out, which I expect will be November sometime. Will have to move on to the Winter targets!