Best bino-night of the year thus far 2014-03-23

[VigdisVZ]

Greetings SGL

I managed to jump in the car and go a few km out of town to a semi-dark site in order to use the gap in the clouds and the good transparency/seeing.

Since I didn't have time to load my full gear (it was already way past 10pm when I started out) but I grabbed by 10x50 and my Nikon.

I revisited a whole lot of familiars like the Double Cluster, The Beehive Cluster, Jupiter with moons, Mars, Double-double in Lyrae and M13.

Spurred on by this I tried some objects I only saw in the scope earlier like M81+M82. Very dim and fuzzy but I managed to confirm having spotted them by their alignment towards eachother.

Because of this, I decided to hunt some new messiers; the globs M92 and M56. I tried M5 but couldnt get a lock on it (southern sky was brighter from LP and a dim band of clouds lurked just beneath Mars).

I also took some pictures in various directions to see what I could pick out. Very pleased with the results.

Here's a selfie I took:

Edit: Spelling

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Great report. Bins are just so handy when it comes to quickly chasing gaps in the clouds. You did well to spot M56 with 10x50 bins. Doable but not very easy.

[VigdisVZ]

Thanks. Was with quite a bit of looking at surrounding objects and indirect seeing, but I have a distinct feeling I saw a fuzzy patch at the right place for M56, but nothing with direct seeing. I wouldn't have judged it possible unless I had confirmation for seeing faint magnitudes by having spotted M81-M82. I'd say it's still about 20% chance I might have mis-judged spotting it, so I'll be back for it when I get a chance.