Binos+slightly darker skies= I am in LOVE

[Celinibellini]

I bought a pair of Bresser 10x50 out of Ebay few weeks ago and did not really have the chance to look up and make interesting finds in my London sky...

but I arrived at my mum's yesterday and I fell in love again with the sky!

Here (some remote village in France) the nights are so much darker; you look up and you already see thousands of stars!!!

We started the evening with the observation of the ISS at dusk; my mum was so excited!!!

Couple of hours later, I took the binos and look up at random.... OMG so many starts there!!!! I definitely found a very nice cluster, visible but not "resolvable" with the naked eye. Gonna try to find out what it was. It was plain West at 23.00GMT, probably 45° from the horizon... any ideas?

(and now I am seriously thinking of relocating under darker skies )

[starguest]

Yeah, a dark site and clear skies make all the difference. I had a great time earlier in year when I went skiing and took my modest 8x40s plus a starmap. Night was so clear compared to many seen there before. I wished I had taken my portable scope stuff.

[Celinibellini]

I just checked, this was my first sight of M44

I will stay few more days at my mum and will go to an even more remote location at the end of the week... If I am lucky I may see more Messiers!

[ismangil]

That's great, I'm still to properly use my new 10x50 as well, so encouraged that you can find M44!

Remember to log it, even just a note somewhere on the time and date you seen it.

[brantuk]

If it was half way between Castor and Regulus I'd agree with M44 (Beehive cluster)

[Celinibellini]

OK, I had my second look at it tonight, and this was indeed M44! This is just beautiful!!!

I also took pictures with my 400mm... not sure they were focused though

I will try to stack them and post them somewhere

[Celinibellini]

as expected my pictures were slightly out of focus and DSS doesn't detect any stars (even when set at 2% °

Oh well, I will certainly do better next time!