"And the stars look very different today".

[cotterless45]

Some real surprises in the astronomical glow light. Kicked off with Saturn, which kept up a stunning x300, showing lovely details. An old Vixen 10mm S. Plossl into a x2.5 Barlow provided the views. Reducing the aperture using the end cap helped.I spent ages looking for all the moons. Thanks to Stu for lighting this fire ! Backing off to x100 showed the bee swarm of moons that I'd not thought of looking for.

The ISS passed at 10.40, very bright.

Comet Lovejoy in Ursa Major provided a super view nestling in an arc of gentle stars at midnight. I had a look a couple of hours later on, it was filling this arc of stars.

M5 at x150 resolved into it's uneven sided sparkle with bright out layers and foreground stars.

I had a look at δ (18) Cygni, reducing the aperture and using x218, caught the small bright companion of Rukh.

The over to globular clusters in Ophiuchus, M10, the larger delicate M12. Followed by the diffuse fainter M14, M9 and the averted M107. I found NGC 6517, although beaten by light by NGC 6517 and NGC 6342.

The planetary nebula NGC 6309 was found at the corner of a triangle, with a double at the top at x50. NGC 6572 at x30 showed just a really stunning bright emerald green to blue huge planetary nebula. It took up to x200, just a really bright wonderful find at +8.1. Certainly worth observing.

Then a couple of amazing sights. IC 4665, a bright cluster at x30, an arc of stars in a bright ball. Over to NGC 6633, a very fine sight at x30. Again a couple of must sees.

This was just spectacular with so many doubles and different magnitude stars.

I had a look at the field of "Barnard's Star" . This is the fastest moving star. Over a year you can see it's position change.

I was quite amazed by the fine seeing and what was possible. I don't think that for twilight that you can beat a frac from 4" upwards. I packed up with Vega overhead, the first signs of the Milky Way through Cygnus and a great big grin !

Clear skies !

Nick.

[cotterless45]

This'll help!

[Qualia]

Lovely report, Nick and thank you for sharing it with us. For the last few nights I've been haunting the very same region you've mapped above I've been working on the doubles and that patch of globs at around 17:30hrs. Needless to say, I'm not staying up so late as you

A question, Nick. Have you been able to split Sabik? I've been trying this week and even throwing quite a bit of power at the binary, I'm not getting more than a hint of a peanut shape in its casing.

[cotterless45]

Sabik, (η Oph) Is .6", "we're going to need a bigger boat !"

This is a great area to be exploring just now,

Old Nick.

[estwing]

Great work there old boy keep up the good work!

[Owmuchonomy]

Great Nick. Yes, I know what you mean about lighting the fire. For me, the Emerald PN was stunning. Saturn's moons, well I have seen 5 through the SCT but when it was higher. At the moment I can't get it from the obsy so resort to the Dob stuffed in a gap in the hedge but it's very low from 54' N.