A better night than expected

[WaveSoarer]

As forecast, we had hazy sunshine here all day yesterday and I didn't hold up much hope for any observing last night. I have had some very nice views of Jupiter when there hase been some high haze and I was hoping that at least I'd be able at least do some observing of Jupiter and Mars. I stuck my head out the door just after nine and I could see an appreciable number of bright stars and both Mars and Jupiter. I also downloaded some satellite images and they showed a few holes coming up from the south coast. After setting up I got a fleeting glimpse of Jupiter as it started to duck behind the neighbour's house. There wasn't much detail as the scope hadn't cooled and and the haze was thick enough to wash things out. The sky then got really opaque I waited for a while, it seemed like ages, and then a fresh hole drifted over. This time I decided to try Mars at 300x. The view was reasonably steady but there wasn't much detai, if anything, to be seen though I could convince myself that there was an occasional glimpse of the polar cap.

After Mars drifted behind a tree I decided to have a look for Vesta and Ceres, which are in the same region of the sky. The transparency was still not great but Vesta wasn't too difficult to locate and it's surprisingly bright. It appears as just a point of light, of course, but it will be interesting to watch it move relatve to the background stars over the coming days. Ceres was trickier as there were a number of points of light within the FOV that were of similar brightness and could easily have been it. Repeated viewings over a few hours would be needed to know for sure which point of light it was.

The sky immediately over head was looking more promising so I then turned my attention to the galaxy NGC 2841, which I has checked out with my binoculars a few days before. It was an easy star hop in the finder from Theta-Uma, though being near to zenith it involved some gymnatsics and neck strain to get the position on the finder cross-hairs, and sure enough there it was easily visible at 67x and at 100x. There was not much detail to be seen but I was pleasantly surprised that I'd even managed to see anything considering how milky the sky looked to the naked eye.

Buoyed by this, I decided to try for something more challenging and this time I went for the galaxy C26, NGC 4244, which was also almost over head. This is another fairly easy star hop and it was just visible at 67x. The contrast wasn't great but, given the conditions, it was good to see it. The view came and went as the holes drifted across.

Finally I had a look for C32, NGC 4631, the Whale galaxy. I found this via a different star hop, though it isn't far from C26 in the sky, and I saw it immediately at 67x. It had  its fairly distinctive whale shape and appeared significantly brighter than C26. Very pleasing to see though, again, it occasionally vanished from view. I also tried to find the crowbar galaxy, NGC 4656 and NGC 4657, but despite a couple of attempts I couldn't see anything much despite being sure I was on the right location. It then pretty much clouded over completely and I then packed things away. I'll need to try looking for the crowbar again when the sky is actually properly clear.

Anyway, not too bad a night considering how poor the conditions were. It's encouraging that it's possible to do some DSO observing even when the sky isn't absolutely clear.