Tested the seeing on Jupiter and noticed a lack of sharp details. Banding and hints of surface detail were there but no moments of stillness allowed me to get my eye in deeper and waiting for the finer details tonight was a no no. Next I turned to Mars, more so that I can mentally note changes as this planet becomes more favourable to view over the coming months. I had only previously glimpsed Mars a few times before with my new setup, and the disk has always presented itself as uniform in colour. Last night I was certain of sensing 2 colours on the disc, if only as a fleeting glimpse I was happy to say it was a noticeable improvement. This could be lots to do with my new 8mm eyepiece giving me my first taste of x200 magnification, which for me is a revelation by the way.

With Mars continuing its journey and Jupiter slipping behind a neighbours chimney pot, I turned to the mighty keystone in Hercules. Its an area of sky I am comfortable with, M13 was shown to me at a star party where I took a 60 second glimpse, I left the eyepiece hankering to see the object again in more detail. I held the memory of the view, and was insistent on researching where the object was & during the long summer nights with a feeling of accomplishment found it with binoculars, I stared at that smudge for hours and last night after 18 months had a real chance to resolve the cluster myself for the first time. Back to binoculars I took a 2 min refresher on getting M13. Then set on getting it in the finder. I knew I had it centred in the eyepiece before I looked down into it and instantly on looking in the hole mumbled the words 'no' in a tone of disbelief. It was beautiful, the distant dandelion clock was now a complex speckled cold metallic mass of pin points backed onto a soft fuzzy glow. The striking difference was it showed as less definably spheroidal as the outer portion of the cluster showed up the 'lonely' stars on the perimeter. Further in certain areas showed very bright almost pixilated flecks that stood out from the warmer glowing more spherical core. This object looked spectacular at x64 x105 & x200. The Hercules Globular can do no wrong.

With a rusty memory on how to find M92 I looked back at a star atlas and then found it in the binoculars. I managed it in the finder and was once again shown a beautiful view that was complemented across all magnifications . M92 seemed smoother & warmer than M13. That may have been wishful thinking as by now it was time to come in and climb under the duvet as it was 4am. I will return back to M92 and give it the attention it deserves, living in the limelight of M13 is almost unfair.