Scope: C100 EDR 100mm/900mm

Lenses: Celestron Plossl 20, TeleVue Plossl 8, 2xBarlow

Location: Back Garden

Visibility: Good

Light Pollution: Heavy

First observed IC4665 since my wife missed it last time and we especially enjoy seeing open clusters, visibility was very good.

At this point waves of clouds came skimming across the sky but fortunately this only lasted ten minutes or so and we were back in business.

Next we took a look at Alberio, another sight that my wife missed when feeling ill a few weeks ago. A beautiful combination of blue and orange but a few straggling clouds meant that the view seemed to be clearer at 45x than 112.5x. 45x magnification also allows the contrast of the two stars colour with the surrounding stars to be appreciated.

After this we tracked down to M56, a globular cluster. This cluster was fairly unimpressive in our 4" scope so we didn't spend too long on it and we decided to move further along to M27.

We decided to give star hopping a go rather than our usual method of using coordinates and after some confusion we managed to track the Dumbbell down. We took this little fella in for a while and I noticed that the longer I observed, the more I could make out but still a delicate sight which didn't take magnification well.

Moved on to M71 next, the alleged globular cluster but didn't spend too long here as it was fainter than M56.

We then tracked down the Coathanger (C399) and spend a while enjoying its sights. There is something very pleasing about an open star cluster (even an optical one such as this). I enjoy the way each star in the cluster appears almost identical and how they stand out from the surrounding stars.

Lastly we attempted to find 61 Cygni but were unable to work out where it was before more clouds rolled in - time for bed.