October 10, 2015: Belated report on short session

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Last Saturday night was nice and clear so after a party at our ballroom and Latin dancing club, I had a brief session with the C8. I first tried to find NGC 7457 in Pegasus. After a brief star hop from Scheat (beta Pegasi), I found the correct location with the Nagler 31T5. Switching to the 22T4 I spotted a small, somewhat elongated fuzzy patch near a neat little row of stars with one off to the side. It was quite hard to spot with these stars nearby, but it persistently showed up in the same spot. A quick google for an image of it showed it was exactly in the right location: NGC 7457 bagged. It looked a bit smaller than the image suggests, probably because I can only see the core of the object.  I then turned to M31 (always an easy target, lovely in the 14x70 finder), and adjacent M32 and M110. Using M32 as a starting point I tried to find the star cloud NGC 206. After some moving up and down, and switching between 22T4 and 31T5 I noticed that a little, faint fuzzy patch appeared in the same position consistently in both EPs (no internal reflection). Its overall shape, size, and location match the appearance in images, so I consider NGC 206 bagged as well. I then trundled passed an old favourite which was still visible over the neighbour's house: M57. Finally, I had a look at the Veil, with the Witch's Broom standing out quite clearly with the O-III filter.

After that I called it a night, as I was very tired indeed. Nice session with two new finds and quite a few old friends.

[laudropb]

Very nice report. Better late than never, as they say. Thanks for posting.