Special K

Those small cluster in Cass can be a lot of fun. I’m with you on M52.....it’s a very faint bunch. With averted you’d never miss it as a fuzzy but doesn’t yield many stand out points of light when looking directly at it.

That’s a handy list of doubles I must try for. Small constellation too! I had a look at M15 the other night and it sure is dense. Nice one!

The field sounds like a winner. One man’s solitude is another man’s peace and quiet! It’s good to share and the moon is a real crowd pleaser that’s for sure.

That Crescent is one faint object! Thanks for posting

That's a hefty, chunky looking scope!!! Bet the views are grand, and of course the moon is in the way at the moment. Wishing you many more happy trails across the sky

That looks like a great deal for someone skilled enough to clean those lenses. Sorry it cannot be me!

That’s a great report and I have to agree using bins is effortless and rewarding. I looked at Zeta Lyr at 44” separation in the scope s week back and didn’t linger. But looking at them in 10x50s a few nights later and Wow!!!

Excellent one Peter!!! Just reaffirms what I was seeing at just that time. The tail in your image is very distinct. That’s a picture to be proud of and grateful for!

I’ve heard this quite a few times now and looking forward to LED! We’re still on the orange ones here but my tshirt-on-a-stick trick works a treat for the worst lamp across the street!

Great report! Some nights just seem to stand out. Ouch, I didn’t know that dark adaptation also deteriorates with age! I hope that’s not the case as there are enough things to struggle with as it is. A delaying of dark adaptation by a few extra minutes is not going to have a functional impact on observing over several hours. I choose to ignore it! Let’s face it: age will have an impact on our sight. But hopefully, experience in observations can overcome some of these handicaps. On the topic of measuring quality of skies, there’s a lot of layers to the onion. Some methods are useful for different things, e.g. the Bortle Scale seems to get very detailed at the highest levels where a key factor is whether you are detecting Zodiacal light or Gegenschein. I also find NELM indicative of the base conditions of the location being observed from and add to this the factors of local seeing and transparency. Just to make things more confusing, there are SQM measurements too

Great report! The fog is a kicker. Towards 4am this morning I was packing it up and skies were closing in. When I woke around 8:30 there was a heavy ground fog being illuminated by the rising sun. A beautiful scene in its own right!!

This morning offered the best view yet! 21P was not shy and retiring any more, and I'm gonna go out on that limb and claim I could see the tail fanning out from the coma a little bit. I did the sketch below around 3am and then tinkered around other objects. I came back about 45 mins after the sketch and it had shifted half the distance of the last void toward that huge pack of stars!!! It's not often you can visually observe the cosmos moving and what a delight!

@Wyvernlooking at that picture, all of the stars look dimmer so it's hard to tell. Atmospherics must have really had an effect. This was the morning I missed and should have been out looking! It was bright as anything Weds morning and would have been a great view. There was no chance today due to cloud, so I slept through

That sounds like a smasher @Patbloke!! 120 is a good size all round and f/7.5 is handy for all sorts of observing pursuits. Nice report on targets from the field test too!! My last attempt with Theta Aur wasn’t a success. I must try harder

Great report! Skies sure are dark out there and that’s an excellent result with The Lagoon.