New Year Kickoff

Date: Sat 5th Jan 2013, from 6pm to 8pm: 2hrs
Location: Jon's @ Boulevard
Weather:  Seeing 7/10, Transparency 4/10. No wind. in the beginning clouds on wester horizon.. central and eastern horizon clear... after two hours transparency messed up and cloud cover was almost everywhere.
Instruments: jon's 16" and TV101. Two Nikon and one Celestron 10x50 binocs

Highlight of the night: kickoff for 2013 after almost two years..


M38, 37, 36: All three clusters looked beautiful in both scopes and binocs. Crystal clear pinpoint stars.

M35: Looked way bigger than the above triplet.. never noticed it before.. in binocs, the difference in  clearly visible

Pleides: simply beautiful in both scopes.. no nebulosity.

Jupiter: watched multiple times. because o no winds, fantastic view.. main two belts + 1 more belt line visible.. southern fainter wider band visible..  5 satellites: 2 on each side and one on southern side..

Veil nebula: spent lot of time on this one.. very nice.. in 16" scope main two components visible.. the middle third one visible as well plus some fuzziness visible around.. in TV101..you can see both easter and western part... but you will notice that western is much brighter than the eastern part (next to the star).. never noticed it before.. no other components visible.. OIII filter was on.

california neb: in TV101, with H-Beta filter. some fuzziness visible.. somewhat hard.. no discernible shape either... without the filter, it was just impossible..

north american neb:  OIII (???) was on.. Large fuzziness object visible..seemed like divided in two parts... no discernible shapes.. again nothing visible without filter.

M42: fabulous. trapezoid was pin point. 4 stars visible with nag31, lowest magnification. very nice nebulous cloud, brightly lit.

ngc2301: Long elongated star cluster with some circular/heart shape cluster in the middle. Clearly visible in binocs or finder.

binoc comparision: compared jon's nikon 10x50 Action with mine nikon 10x50 Action EX. FoV is same. jon'd are not sealed, so image is not crispy in his, when humidity was high.
 
called off the night earlier because of cold and cloud cover.. i have lost my survivial skills in cold.. have to get back in schedule soon..