A Night of Discoveries

[Space Oddity6]

So, after naturally getting a few nights of cloud after buying a 6mm and moon filter (asking for it really), tonight I finally got to use my new equipment.

My first stop was, of course, the Moon which was extremely bright tonight, and I spent a good 20mins looking at the Tycho crater and the surrounding area.

Next stop was something I'd been meaning to look at for a while -M13. I did all the aligning etc, found the Keystone and aimed the finderscope halfway between the 2 Western stars and saw...nothing! After fiddling about with the twiddler thing I did however happen upon something which resembled M13, but seemed...smaller. Very faint, it looked like a dust cloud, but looked much less grand than how it was described in Turn Left at Orion. Anyone have any idea what it was?

West to East I centred on Jupiter and 4 moons in great diagonal line. After viewing Jupes with a combination of EPs and Barlows, I set out for Uranus but again failed to spot it. I wasn't too bothered though because I found what I think was a red giant star. Through my 25mm wide angle, it didn't seem to have too many neighbours, but was an unmistakeable orangey-red colour that, if I didn't know better, I would have thought it was Mars. So again, anyone know what it is? Personally I'd quite like to lay claim to it, I'm quite proud of my discovery!

Anyway, sorry for the long post but it was quite an exciting night and any advice on what I actually saw would be epic.

[TopHouse]

I'd bet your dusty cloud was m13, it does that sometimes, I've only had it look stunning once, I find it's one of those you've got to keep going back too, you can get nights that you think are great and it's just fuzzy, then you can get an average night and it looks better!

[CGolder]

m13 was looking great last night and then the moon washed it away, at around midnight i looked out the window, not a cloud in the sky..... yet all i could see was the moon and vega.

Moon was so bright

[richbyers]

keep using that aveted vision and regularly check on m13- which iot would have been, as it gets alot better the more you look

rich

[Space Oddity6]

It was quite underwhelming after reading about it in TLAO, even with my 6mm barlowed it looked so faint I couldn't actually look directly at it. Interestingly though, I switched on my red dot finder which was pointing just to the right of the top western Keystone star, so was it really M13?

Any ideas on the red giant? Looking on stellarium now it looks like it could have been one in Pisces '19psc HIP 117245' or as I now like to call it, 'The Great Red Giant Space Oddity - 6.' Got a certain ring to it, don't you think?