Autumnal Equinox, Pegasus, Pisces, and beyond

[Special K]

It was nice to have a decent cloud break to coincide with Equinox and was made even more special by the absence of any moonlight!  I ventured into less travelled areas and found the delightful M15 in Pegasus, which is quite easy to find right near the horse’s snout.  At magnitude 6.4, this is a nice compact Globular Cluster, well worth a look.  The M2 Globular in Aquarius is dimmer but I must try for this also when I come back to have a look at M15 again. 

Seeing was just average, so I didn’t try to Neptune again, but Uranus was ok at 120x.  Nice to confirm its location once again get a look at the otherworldly color.  While in Pisces, Alrisha (alpha) is a nice double with a separation of just 1.8” and the Barlow was required.  Again, with seeing not being great, this was too much magnification for fine details but enough to manage the split.  M74 is near the area of Eta, but beyond the limit of the little refractor.

I see the Pleiades is really coming into view early and getting higher and higher in the sky.  Nice to have these back and they present such a refreshingly bright, blue view.  A bit too hastily, I started on M38 which was dim, but not without checking out the Cheshire Cat and the Minnow in Auriga.  M36 is not bad while low in the sky as it has less stars but they are greater magnitudes.  Further down, M37 was just too near the horizon, but the huge moment of the evening was going from that up to the Double Cluster and being blown away by the brightness of it against an inky background!  This is ideally positioned of late, and with no moon is stunning!  Moving onto Stock 2, I finally saw the stickman to this asterism…….great target as well.  After some trawling toward Cassiopeia, I had a look at the clock and shocked by the lateness of the hour!  4 hours well spent and looking forward to some more like that. 

Clear skies.