3rd time lucky and bagged an Owl!

[Stridor]

Pleasing night last night; managed at last to observe M101 (Spiral Galaxy) in Ursa Major; it had always eluded me before.  I hovered around Leo for some feint views of Ms 105/65/66/96 & NGC3384, but my most satisfying viewing was M97, the Owl Nebula in Ursa Major : I did try and view it early on in the evening but it was probably too low in the sky and couldn't see anything; came back to it an hour or so later, well, it was visible now but only the slightest hint of nebulosity; came back to it again another hour later and I couldn't believe the improvement; I could almost make out the `eyes`, but my `eyes` could have been playing tricks on me.................even so, it really stood out now and really showed me the value of returning to something you may have dismissed earlier on ( I was using a 24mm Panoptic ((98x)) with and without a UHC Filter). 

Nice to see Jupiter as well, but it was close to roof tops, so a bit of heat distortion was evident.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice haul. The Owl is one of the trickier planetaries.

[John]

Good report !

I tracked down the Owl last night as well. I used a UHC type filter but an O-III works really well too. Without the filter I could still make out the nebula (though it was a lot fainter) but in the same field of view the galaxy M108 popped into view as well. The galaxy dissapears when the filter is used so it's worth viewing both with and without a filter as you did.

 

[laudropb]

Well done. It just goes to show that a bit of extra effort can pay dividends.