After lots of being involved in public astronomy events this weekend, it was nice to just get out in the back garden with the Dob tonight for an hour or so. Nice conditions - good seeing, no clouds, although maybe not the best transparency. Certainly not a night for faint galaxies with the Moon dominating things.

I decided to spend some time exploring the open clusters in Cassiopeia. First up was M103 - first time I've seen this as far as I can remember, and it's well worth a look - nice, compact cluster, marked out by three stars in a triangle and with one star in the centre being a particularly striking red colour. I had a go at sketching this object - will post it here once I've scanned it.

Then I just started following my nose around from M103, and found the trio of clusters NGC 663, 659 and 654. NGC 663 the best of these; a nice view at x50 with lots of stars packed into the field. 659 much smaller but conspicuous; 654 not much to speak of!

Hunting around further I stumbled across NGC 457, the Owl Cluster. Great wide field object this, and I had a go a drawing it as well.

Finally, I turned the scope on Jupiter which looked excellent tonight in the steady air. Bags of disk detail. All in all, not bad for an hour (or so's) work!