Mr_Simnock

Have you bought an extender at all for it to get focus with certain eyepieces? I can't reach focus with any of my eyepieces till my diagonal turns up next Monday but I do feel something to extend things by about 20mm would help a lot, anyone any suggestions?

Joined the club today, mount won't be with me for another week though

My general use bino's are Zeiss 8x32 Conquest HD, my astro bino's are APM 16x70 ED

I can hand hold but only for a very short time. I use a Chinese made K&F concept tripod (KF-TM2534T), it's very hand as one of the legs unscrews to make a mono pod if need be but I don't use that with the bino's as it's too unsteady for me.

I really love looking at M36, M37 and M38, each has has it's own distinct shape and look. I use them to judge the seeing conditions often during any session with my bino's.

Started this short session around 1:45am and finished around 2:30am. I used my APM 15x70 ED Bino's. I could see to just about mag 5 stars with my naked eye, through my bino's though could see stars down to mag 9.5 with direct vision and around 10 with averted. Mellot 11, checked this first, haven’t looked at it for years, it's my favourite large open cluster, all the nearby galaxies are out of reach of my bino's in my rather light polluted back garden. Had a look for M51 (galaxy) and found it but it was a very dim hazy patch, tried to look for M101 and M106 (galaxies) too but found neither. Found M35 cluster in Gemini which looked very good, lots of pin point stars, to me it forms an asterism like a person with open arms a bit similar to the string man cluster but a lot larger. M37 was next, very obvious, much better than when I looked at it earlier on (I did have a look at around 10pm earlier), could make out a smudgy haze with a distinct shape whereas before it was barely visible at all. M36 and 38 next and again far more obvious than before, M38 looking like a dinosaurs footprint with averted vision. Looked for and found the small ngc1528 cluster in Perseus, it has a distinct hazy shape but I can’t just make out any individual stars. Had a brief sweep through mellot 20 on my way to the double cluster (ngc884 and ngc869), didn’t hang around there long but did pause on stock 2 (strong man cluster) for a while, quite nice. Had a brief look around Cassiopeia but didn’t really spot much apart from M103. Had a little look at M44 too, the wild duck cluster but wasn’t too bothered about that, I find it a bit underwhelming tbh. I finished off by returning to M37 and also another sweep through Auriga.