Eskimo 2021-01-18

[Fraunhoffer]

Clusters and the Eskimo
I managed a couple of hours observing last night with big Dob'. There was quite a bit of high cloud which curtailed my plans and the seeing wasnt very good.
Cancer was invisible to the eye. All the galaxies I tried around Leo and the nebulae on my list were just the faintest of smudges if they could be found at all. Ive seen more on better night with my small refactor.
However, starting in the west around 1am (after lights out) I had some splendid views of the usual clusters in Auriga: M37, M36 M38 and NGC 1893. The red star near the centre of M37 looked very nice.
M1 in Taurus was just a faint oval smudge this evening.
M35 In Gemini looked super, but the small distant nearby cluster NGC 2158 was a challenge.
M44 in Cancer was a field full of stars with a nice mix of orange ones scattered throughout the brighter white ones.
After an unsuccessful galaxy hunt around Leo, I returned to Gemini before it set to see the bright double Castor. 
Whilst in Gemini I decided to finish with the Clown Face/Eskimo nebula NGC 2392 which was a surprising bonus. A very clear pale blue circular patch and even the centre star could be resolved. Its not often the 8mm ep gets onto the Dob' and I went in to find my sketch pad.

Hopefully another stargazing night will arrive soon.

Clear skies all.
 

[RobertI]

Lovely sketch!

[Jiggy 67]

One word......WOW!!