Brief hour before the cloud

[Stardaze]

All week the forecast looked clear for last night, then yesterday morning that changed, for cloud due around 1am. Typically that turned up around midnight and so I only managed an hour. Next door had a get together too and with the light in direct vision looking SE, my hope to catch my first glimpse of the veil this year was well and truly scuppered.

I haven’t managed to used the dob for a couple of months given a stomach injury and it was my first outing with the Pentax XW 7, so given the conditions I opted for a quick skip around some easy, notable doubles. Started with Polaris as my finder needed a tweak,  then captured Izar, Cor Caroli, Albireo and the double double of course. From there I had a quick look at M57 before dropping by M5 and finishing with M13. The cloud was rolling in quickly by now and the party next door didn’t seem to be abating so time for an early bath. 
I will say that the XW performed superbly. Wasn’t sure whether giving up the FOV was going to be an instant issue but the drift time with the globs was perfectly fine, certainly is very sharp across the field, Vega looked awesome.

[Stephen_M]

Nice report. Similar experience to me, felt like a race against time to do as much before the clouds came over.