Planets and Clusters a plenty

[mjpfc]

One good thing about looking at all these Comets eve and morning lately id that it has put me in a position

to look at all the planets through the Course of 24 hours.

Venus, Neptune and Uranus in the evening sky, then Jupiter, Mars Mercury and finally Saturn in the Mornings.

OK, Jupiter is the only one high and close enough to show much detail, but mars is slowly growing, and both

Mercury and Venus have shown Gibbous/Crescent phases.

I have never seen Saturn so soon after Solar Conjunction before and it has made me wonder why I have not

put more effort into this.  I always do with Mercury and Venus so why not the other Planets?

I have also spent a lot of time, waiting for Linear snd the Like to clear rooftops to the Northeast, and filled-in

by looking at Clusters instead of Galaxies and other more diffuse objects.

In Casseopia, Pagasus and Lacerta I have observed some new NGC / Stock / King and Collinder objects that

I have never seen before, some of whom also have nebulosity involved with the clusters and are quite stunning.

one such was the Cluster NCG 2175 which I had seen before, but had not used a filter to seen NGC 2175 the

"Monkey Head Nebula" - here's an object with a Common Nick-name and I'd never seen it!

in my 20cm it was roughly circular, and made a stunning frame for the cluster. Another such was BFS 15 Surrounding

the tiny Bergeson 1.

I suppose the lessons here are:    a.  Use the morning as well as the evening. 

                                                      b.  All the catalogs have something beatutiful to see.

                                                      c.   If you have various filters - use the things.

Speaking of which, Sol is coming across the gap in the housed to the Southeast, Time for the W/L and H/A filters

to strutt their stuff.

Clear skies,     Mick

[Astro Imp]

Great report and interesting to read about NCG2174/2175 as I was just reading the star hopper feature covering this object in the current Astronomy Now.