Messier Marathon - Part I

Date: Mar 28th 2009, Saturday
Observation Time: 7:00pm to 12:30pm (5:30 hrs)
Location: KC, CA
Weather: Excellent.. Seeing 4 of 5. nominal winds. Clouds in slow motion from west since 7pm and rolled all over at 12:30pm. Nominal winds.
Instruments: New Orion XTi 10, Jon's 16.5' and bunch of naglers, panoptics and uwans :) yey !!
Buddies: Jon


Total Objects : 69 = 57 + Markarains Chain 8 + Virgo Zoo 5
New Objects : 18
Messier Objects : 46 = 42 + Markarains Chain 2 + Virgo Zoo 2

Attempted Messier Marathon.. Objective was to capture as many M objects possible before cloud rolls over around midnight. Spend time with Jon while browsing.

Because of Messier marathon, overall didn't spend much time in oserving objects or puting higher mags. but tries to locate objects and remember their locations. Jon showed few interesting objects along the line.

Print out of messier marathon sequence indeed helped as a observation schedule.

Because of KC valley mountains, lost all objects till M33 i.e around 30deg of W view is blocked, so started with: M45 in binocs and perseus double cluster in 10'.

Double Cluster: Lower one bigger then the upper one. One is loosely connected and contins lot of bright stars while another one is concentrated and full of faint stars.

M103 OC (New): Seems closer to the star Delta, but browsed on wrong side. At low mags, M103 seems to be 3 stars in triangle fashion, but middle one is a pair. At lil higher mag, you can see that left star is full with other faint stars. only left star is the brighter one in the herd. (Need to confirm this observation. (TBD ??)

M52 OC (New): Though away from any nearby star, easy to find. Its indeed a tight faint cluster, but a lone bright star in the cluster.

M76 PN Little Dumbbell (New): Easy catch. Impressive.

M34 OC (New): Next to Algol. Y shape in center. All stars are bright.

M45 Pleiades (New): In 42mm eyepiece, all sisters fit well, there seems to be lot of tight doubles inside this one. No nebulosity. surprisingly this my first entry documented for M45. I have seen it hundred times from binocs.

M42-M43: Impressive view M42. Watched it multiple times during whole night. Just after sunset, trapezoid visible, no nebulosity. After dark, view in 16.5' 35mm panoptic view was the best i have ever seen of M42-M43. All 70deg full of nebulocity. Never realized that M42 nebulocity is so huge and impressive. Trapezoid: Tried for E-F. Seeing was just too bad. never saw them.In the process i realized that, though whole sky seems so impressive from dark place, in reality the seeing can indeed be bad. Thats the difference betn transparency and seeing. Trapeziod or planets are good tests for seeing.

Running Man nebula: Visited near by Nebulosity with 3 bright stars visible. Dark running man didn't show up..obviously.. probably need a filter.

M78 Neb: I told Jon abt my failed M78 attempt couple of days back form home.. Sigma and Alnilam line points to m78, but the object is not nearby any prominent shapes, probably there is UMa shape on right side of this object.

Flame Nebula (New): Also tried flame and horsehead nebula.. both of them seem to be on opposite sides of sigma (TBD ??). Glare from the nearby star kills the nebulosity, so actually you have to keep the nebula and star at the edge and hide the star, so nebulosity is prominently visible.

Horsehead Nebula (Failed): According to Jon, he pointed the scope at precise location, but didn;t see anything at all. We already had H-beta filter on, but still didn;t see anything. this one is really hard.

M79 GC (New): Easy catch. Follow the dagger from Orion to alpha-bet in lupus. Contimue the line and thats where M79 is. Its impressive. At 38x, yo ucan see the bluish globular. high mags help. At 76x outer edge stars are resolvable. 110x didn;t help, not able to focus.. bad seeing.

Tau CMa (New): Jon mentioned abt this Masterpiece. Small concentrated cluster around Tau CMa. Tau is only bright star in this cluster. Infact not sure if its part of the cluster or not. (TBD ??). Should be visible from home.

M41 OC: Impressive. E shape visible clearly. All bright stars.

M47 OC: M47 k shape didn;t impress much. Actually all stars are sort of bright so k shape or oph shape not very impressive. From light pollution at home, this object is better.

M46 OC and PN: Marvellous. Light pollution kills all stars making them too faint. but from dark place, all stars show up smoothly. Planeotry is easy catch.. My averted vision location, seen from home, is indeed correct. From dark place it pops up. higher Mags helps. Size of PN is almost same as lil concentrated stars above it. Thru 16.5' it was beautiful, Also jon's 28mm UWAN 82deg makes it much more impressive. Colors of PN in 28mm UWAN were much better than My 32mm x2 combo.. Good example to see eyepiece differences.

Thor's helmet (New): huge. nebulosity is enormous. Shape not discernible. Jon mentioned won;t be visible from home. Its nearby M46-M47, but i don't know the location. (TBD ??)

Continued..

Messier Marathon - Part II

Continued..

NGC 2467 nebula (New): while looking for M93, ended up at this one. M93 is on one side of Xi pup, while this is exactly opposite side, same distance. good looking.

M93, M50 and M48 OC: From Light polluted skies, these guys are prominent, but from dark skies, not impressive. :)..

Overall, during whole night star hopping, while looking for intended objects, I saw so many fuzzies on the way that its hard to keep track. I tried my best to look into star atlas, before moving on.

Also M93/M103 examples show that my sense of direction within inverted image of reflector still messes up sometimes. Have to get a better judgement.

Comet Lulin: In Gemini. In 16.5'. Around mag 9. Fuzziness is still visible easily, but small.

Gemini Double Planetory (New): In 16.5', Marvellous pair of planetory. sort of 8 shape visible. Magnification helps. Don't know the location (TBD ??)

M1 Crab: Watched after long time. Easy catch.. Again directional sense in eyepiece messed up. Mag helps.

M36-M38-M37 OC: M36 and 38 are inside, while M37 is outside pentagon. 36 is smaller than its brothers. It has inverted Y shape or stick figure tree shape. M38 is impressive with Pi shape, while M37 is probabaly same size as M38 and it has like ice-cream cone shape, with ice-cream on top :)..

M35 OC: This is another impressive object. At lower mags it fills the eyepiece. All bright stars. The best part is that it is acommpanied by a fuzzy object next to it. It seems to be a nebulous object, but somehow star atlas says its a open cluster. If thats the case, it must be really tight, concentrated and star rich cluster. higher mags seem to be resolving more stars in this one. Need to read more (TBD ??)

M44 OC: Beehive was naked eye.

M67 OC: Star atlas helps to point it betn M44 and Hidra head. It is arched H shape. Left arc of H shape is full of stars. Impressive view.

I am glad i noted my observations on paper during the session. Otherwise i would have got confused between so many OCs.

It marked end of first leg in my marathon. Almost all objects from West side are done. Bit tired by now.. Almost 10:30pm !!

Saturn: Okay seeing/ At 220x, image was fine not that stable. shadow of rings visible clearly on the disk.

M95-M96-M105 plus nearby NGcs: Easy catch. All of them visible. Quick glimpse.

M65-M66-NGC3628: Forgot the location.Took few mins. All them visible. 3628 wasn't clearly visible. Quick glimpse.

NGC2903 Galaxy: Read abt this, but never seen it. Easy catch. Well positioned. Almost edge-on.. bright.. Need to spend more time on this..

NGC 3226-3227 Galaxy pair (New): Jon pointed to this one instead of 2903. Its close to Gamma-Leonois. Pair is bright.. (TBD ??)

Planetory Nebula in Corvus (New): Fought for it so much from home, and from dark sight its easy catch. Too faint for home observation, if don't know where it is. Yet another fuzzy, but didn;t look like PN. Pattern visible thru jon's 16.5'

Antenna galaxies (New): Asked Jon to show me this one. Fought for it from home. Too faint in 16.5' also. Hard to see any pattern. Hopeless pair..

Continued..

Messier Marathon - Part III

Continued..

Virgo-Coma Galactic Cluster: Jon showed me in 16.5' with 35mm Panoptic. Marvellous.. 9 galaxies in same view. 5 of them were pretty sharp. This is a galactic heaven. Don't know which objects I saw, but seemed like Markarain's chain. Wasn;t sure abt the location.

As per star atlas, started with epsilon virginis and must have gone towards M60-M59.. not sure.. tried to browse nearby.. but its easy to loose yourself easily in this galactic zoo. Star hopping in this area is real skill. Need to read more on this one. (TBD ??) .. but its unbelievable view. Can spend hours on this one.. and soon I will :)

In my 10', 42mm 30x view, looks good, but Jon let me borrow his 28mm UWAN with parracor. WOW !! no words !! The field of view 82deg rules ..keeps lot of galaxies in same view. with paracor, view was awesome.. but with parracor, every star is tack sharp. Also tried 22m Nagler.. Hssh !!

For rest of the night, i used Jon's 22m Nagler :) (50x) !!

- Ursa Major:
M81-M82 Bode's Nebulae: Easy catch, extending Alpha-Gamma line, towards pole. Bright pair, barely in 22mm. M81 vertical dust lane visible (??). In 16.5 impressive-bright view. Wish jon would have increased the mag.

- CVn:
M63 Sunflower: Bright and big, unexpectedly.

M51 whirlpool: Galaxy pair merge clearly visible. I guess because of nagler, they look so bright. Smaller than M63.

- Bootes:
M3 GC: Jon showed the location. Still tricky to find it. MArevellous globular.. bright-bluish. Probably can resolve some outer skirt stars with 22m.. high mag required.

- Coma:
M53 GC (New): Identifying Coma constellation was headache. but once found alpha, M53 is an easy catch. Beautiful GC. Smaller than M3.

M64 Black Eye (New): Yet another.. but easy to find.

Seems like i was too tired... just too many fuzzies for one night :) !!

- Ursa Major:
M108 - M97: Both M97 Owl nebula and M108 fits in same view. Nebula is brighter than galaxy. galaxy seems elliptical.

M109: Yet another fuzzy, don't remember much.

M40 (New): Its double rather than any fuzzy. Messier mistake.

M101: Lil tricky, may get confused because of NGCs nearby. but big & bright.. feels up whole eyepiece.. this seemed to be of unusual shape.

- CVn:
M94: Easy to catch with star atlas. Yet another galaxy.

M106 (New): Failed.. too tired.. thought that saw it thru binos, but that can not be..its too faint for binos.

- Hercules:
M13 GC: Sort of in clouds. Still got it. Way bigger than M3 also.. too bright..but wasn;t clear..seeing was just too bad..


TBDs:
- Are we/milkyway part of Virgo galactic cluster?
- Field stop of an eyepiece
- Barlowed laser collimator
- T CMa
- Nagler-Panoptic eyepieces on 10"
- Trapezoid E-F stars: Seeing is better in TDS than KC

Lot of fuzzies while browsing thru the sky. Impressive to see how many "things" are there in the sky.

Late Night Outreach...

Date: 22nd March 2009, Sunday
Observation Time: 11pm to 12pm (1 hr)
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Okay.. Seeing was fine. probably 3.5 of 5
Instruments: Orion 10 XTi
Buddies: Ashwin and Alankar

Total Objects: 3
New Objects: 2

Had nice observing session late night, after Imax-Watchmen. Considering the cloudless night, wanted to show "Crispy" Saturn to Ashwin and Alankar.

- Leo
Saturn: Image wasn't sharp, but better than previous observation. Saturn's rings were perfect-edge-on yesterday 21st March. Felt the same. Wasn't able to see the gap betn rings and the planet, so must be edge-on. 3 moons on western side, while 2 moons on eastern side.

- Corvus
Delta Corvi (New): In order to show some variety of objects in the sky, pointed to this double star in "Hasta"-corvus constellation. Didn't try for any mag-separation calculation. Primary is blue-white, while secondary is orange-red in color. Primary seems far brighter than secondary. In 38x secondary was visible, but not clear enough. Heigher mags resolved it better. Secondary position angle is probably 225deg.

http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~jkaler/sow/algorab.html

- Virgo
To show how galaxy looks like in a scope, I was looking for any nearby bright galaxies. Initial plan was to show Messier galactic zoo in Virgo, but becasue of limited viewing from my patio, skipped Virgo-cluster as well as Leo-cluster.

M104 Sombrero (New): M104 was promising one in the map, but I have never star-hopped to it before, so wasn't much confident.. but BAM...in first shot i got it. Around 110deg angle & ~1.5 times the distance of Delta-Gamma corvi line. In 38x you can see the fuzziness, but barely. Easy to miss this object, but there are 3 bright stars aligned straight to its "SW". Increasing the mags indeed helped in revealing more details. I am surprised with how-much higher mags this object supports in city light pollution also.. At 76x, the edge-on shape was clearly visible. Had a feeling of buldge in the middle, but not clearly. the galaxy itseef is aligned with two other bright stars on west. the edge-on shape probabaly makes 25deg angle with the star-alignment on SW. At 110x, bulge was improved.

Orion CMa Pup "M" browsing

Date: 18th March 2009, Wednesday
Observation Time: 8pm to 10pm (2 hrs)
Location: SD Home, CA
Weather: Okay.. Seeing was okay in the beginning 2.5/5. After an hour it improved. 3.5/5
Instruments: Orion 10 XTi

Total Objects: 11
New Objects: 3

I am surprised how many things I can see from my patio itself. It was good a experience.

- Orion
M42 Orion Nebula: Wanted to investigate Trapezium inside orion nebula. With 40mm (30x), stars C, A, D were visible. B was probably there, but wasn't sure. With 32mm (38x) B popped easily. Additional magnifications 76x, 10mm (120x) didn't help. In-fact 240x was really hard to focus. Probably a bad night.. What is the minimum magnification and seeing required for E & F to show up?

M43: Not a great view. Nebulosity was visible at 32mm-38x, but then lost it at 76x.

Running Man Nebula NGC 1977 (New-Failed): Got the location, north of M43. Saw stars of the nebula. But actual nebulosity was missing at 30x or 38x also. All higher mags were hopeless.

- Canis Major
Started usual browsing of sky and M objects.

M41 OC: Preety sight. With 30x. The E shaped fork was visible. 38x and 76x shows the shape, but doesn't give overall perspective as 30x.

Eta CMa (New): Visual double star. Visible in 38x. Still can not judge the star magnitude and distances properly. Companion is probably 3 times fainter. Also with 10mm-120x, its like 1/8th of the eyepiece view. The distance is probably 3' minutes. ((52 deg/120x)*60)/8)

Info here: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/A/Aludra.html

v1 v3 v2 CMa: More double/variable stars in Canis Major. v3 and v2 are only double, as per the map. Saw only v2 to be double. Indeed tight. but still visible in 38x.

- Monoceros
M50 OC: Fainter than I was expecting, still can not miss it at 30x. Twisted and abstract butterfly shape.

- Puppis
M46-M47 OC: Nice pair. At 30x can not keep both in same view.

M47 is made with all bright stars. Closeup look with 38x shows Ophiuchus constellation shape, with small 'k' shape inside.. k or chair shape. All star seems white.

M46 is not as impressive as M47. Lil fainter and sprinkled like M50. No definite shape visible. I missed the PN inside.

This OC pair is marked by two bright star pairs on each side. Indeed impressive.

M93 OC: Really small. initially i missed it at 38x, but found it again at 30x. High mags show twisted A shape. Impressive.

- Hydra
M48 OC (New): Easy catch. Next to hydra C stars. It shows shape of 7, rotated 180deg inside a rectangular boundary.

- Leo
Saturn: Saturn was the only Leo object I was able to view thru my patio. Saturn was impressive. 32mm-38x shows tiny saturn and existence of rings. 2 moons on left clearly visible. The one inside, had uncollimated bright hue aspect to it. Didn't understand what it was, but 76x clarified it. clearly see 3 additional moons, instead of bright hue. First time ever I captured 5 moons of Saturn. 10mm-120x was again impressive. Saturn rings were nice and were giving a feeling of lil bit of tilt, still not sure. N and S gas bands were going in-out of focus. With barlow, 240x was awesome.. Crispy clear view. Seeing must have been improved by now. Gaseous bands on N-S were clear. Lost 5th moon.. wasn't bright enough. rings were indeed showing the tilt without any doubt. Gaps between the Saturn and rings was clearly visible. Cassinni division wasn't visible, i guess because of the low tilt of rings. Still best ever view of Saturn in my 10" scope.

Showed Saturn to Ashwin and Alankar, but by that time, seeing went bad and in few mins fog rolled over.

Bust..

Date: 17th March 2009, Saturday
Observation Time: 7:30pm to 8pm (30 mins)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Worst weather ever..
Instruments: Orion 10 XTi
Buddies: Ashwin, Alankar and Renga

Venus: The crescent venus shape was marvelous. it was like first phase from the new moon. Because of atmospheric movements, the bright part of Venus was glittering. We watched it from club's 22" scope and then thru my 10" scope. The view from my scope was comparable to club's scope.

Venus was the highlight and only object of the night. Fog rolled over and killed whole night.. it was complete waste driving to TDS. Bad night. !! Accuweather showed that sky is clear, no clouds from 7pm to 11pm, but mentioned abt high humidity. Clear sky clock showed cloud cover, transparency to be excellent, but seeing to be bad... Being deprived of astronomy sessions for more than 2 months, I took a risk of driving to TDS, but complete failure.

Discussion abt "Qualia" with Renga was interesting though.

Comet Lulin

Wed 25th Feb 09, 11:50pm
San Diego Home.
Scope: Orion 10" xti
with Ashwin.

Weather was fine. No clouds. Jut too many lights near house stairs.

Lulin was around 2-3 deg SE from Regulus.

The fuzziness barely visible thru naked eye. Easy catch thru binocs..faint fuzzy.. No green color indication thru binos. In 40mm, Lulin green color visible. No Tail. Its like green globular. not really spherical shape.. but lil elliptical.. bright at the core and fainter & fainter @surrounding.. In 25mm, not a impressive view.. lil blurry. In 9mm, internal coma visible. really bright at the core. Overall, didn't see comet's tail, probabaly being nearby house lights..

Spent some time on Saturn. all eyepiece views were nice.. 9mm was the best. sharp-crispy clear image. rings visible as fine line. Didn't see any gas bands. 4 moons visible. 2 each side.

Recap Year '08 and Plan for '09

Astronomy kicked in Phase II finally. Started serious deep sky observations with 6" and then to 10" personal scopes. With Deep Sky Objects, new sky has opened up.

- Bought Orion XTi 10 Intelliscope.
- Met Jon Isaacs. His help and advice has been proved priceless.

- Total Observations: 16 = 14 documented + ~2 un-documented.

In year '09 :
- Number of observations should double.. atleast 26 !!
- Messier Marathon
- RASC Finest NGC object list
- SAC Best of NGC object list

First Dark Night with Orion XTi 10 - I

Date: 17th Jan 2008, Saturday
Observation Time: 6:00pm to 11:30pm (5:30 hrs)
Location: TDS, CA
Weather: Excellent.. Seeing and Transparency 8/10.. winds picked up around 11pm.
Instruments: New Orion XTi 10, Rick's 12.5" dob, Tony's 8" dob and Bret's 24" dob. Bunch of new eyepieces.
Buddies: Rick, Tony and Bret

Total objects: 40 DSOs + 2 planets
New : 11

Best of the Night: M46 Planetary Nebula and All tiny galaxies in Leo.

First night of the new year.. looks like astronomy for this year started way too early :).. hopefully continues like this..

Objective of the night is to:
- test the new scope
- compare all eyepieces
- check intelliscope performance and functions
- some sky browsing.

Vertical Alignment. Hard.. TDS public pad is indeed slanted a lot.. this is gonna be tricky.. Is vertical stop connection to the scope really required for intelliscope ??

Connected Telerad. Placement is not ideal, but not bad either.. didn't have much choice because of finder location.

Rick from next pad helped to do the collimation with laser collimator.. secondary was lil bit hard to align.. somehow its really tight.. don't know why.. do i need to loose the central screw lil bit ?? ..any way will buy Howe gladder laser collimator this week.. Rick showed me a way to collimate without barlow.. sort of.. he mentioned that barlow is really not required.. only trouble is moving up-down to see and move screws.. that should be okay..

Worst mistake of the night.. Intelliscope battery down.. when i checked the status form home.. it was up.. but i didn't realize that its not good enough to see at night.. i have used this thing in Nov, and it was good.. i must have left it on since then :(..needs new battery now.. the problem was i wasn't able to use it for whole night.. that was one of my objectives at TDS today..zero outcome.. next time !!

Venus: Impressive. 45% phase. Too much waving. Probably scope also wasn't cooled down. MAx magnification with 9mm expanse.. 4.5mm failed.. higher mags didn't help much to see any details.. in the view.. i noticed that when Venus at the edge of eyepiece, it had violet tint on west i.e. bright side. but as the Venus moved to center of the field of view, the violet tinge reduced. Again increased as the movement towards the edge of the eyepiece.. is it indeed eyepiece ?

M42 Orion Nebula: Spent really long time tasting eyepieces.

Tony's celestron axiom 25mm on 8' dob: 82deg field of view.. impressive view.. star crowded sky.. Orion in the middle.. dark tower visible.. trapezoid visible.. second dark tower perpendicular to main one clearly visible..

40mm GSO: View wasn't bad.. 60 deg FOV. but stars at the edge were stretched and looked like streaks.. bad eyepiece at the edges.. Again barrel length was trouble so have to take out the glasses.. second tower wasn't visible..still good view.

32mm E-Lux: Impressive view.. stars were fine. trapezoid barely visible.. i think 3 stars of it visible. second tower was visible, but not yet clear..

25mm 1.25' and 25mm 2': Second tower visible, but not as clearly as tony's. ..hmm eyepiece quality :) .. $150 ?? trapezoid visible.. compared both my 25mm eyepieces. FOV is larger in 2' vs 1.25'.. definitely.. but i felt that 1.25' is lil bit better in contrast as compared to 2'. i was able to focus better on stars with 1.25'.. also m43 nebulous area was better in 1.25'

10mm X-cel: marvelous view.. all nebulous details in second tower visible. Trapezoid 5th star was in. wasn't aware that there is 6th one two..

9mm expanse: surely better field of view.. no other difference than 10mm x-cel.

35mm Teleview Panoptic on ricks 12.5' dob: 07deg FOV. MArvellous view.. second tower was there..lil bit in-out of focus. still picture was marvelous. 3 out of 4 trapezoid visible. Still with high mags didn't see 6th star. rick tried to explain me the location, but didn't find it.

M43: In 25mm dark region within M43 visible.. western part (left) definitely larger than eastern (right)

Perseus double cluster: Rick TV 35mm view impressive.. pinpoint stars.. mine 32mm was fine too.. stars were perfect pint point.. that shows precise collimation..

M31 Andromeda: Rick TV 35mm: Clear view of whole M31..Dust lane was good.. indeed was getting a feeling of it.. M110 and M32 visible.. but too tiny. My 40mm: M32 & M110 wre but too tiny.. but this eyepiece indeed shows the length/glow of m31.. just too large.. dust lane wasn't much impressive. My 32mm showed the dust lane.. but it wasn't as good as rick 35m.. again eyepiece quality..

M33 Triangulum: Forgot the location. Rick got it.. fuzzy object.. no details visible ..m33 thru bret's 24inch and bino-view marvelous.. hydrogen region was visible at right corner.. also watched so many dark lanes in m33.. the whole view was full of it.. also sort of got a 3d perception.. must be because of bino-view. In bino-view mag calculation is different..view was around 150x. thru my 32mm or higher mags, just a fuzzy object, no details visible... aperture helps.

Blue snowball NGC7662: okay.. not that great.. really tiny.. i was expecting more.. compare with Jon's 10' dob.

M81-M82: impressive. M81, on left, seems as big fuzzy.. M82 on right seems edge on.. One tiny galaxy NGC3077 (new) right angled above M81. Used 40mm for finding.. 32mm view good.. 25mm was better and showed the dark edge on M82.. 10 mm possible.. but no other details..impressive view thru Rick's 35mm panoptic 70deg FOV.. Tony's 25mm wasn't that impressive considering 80deg FOV.. too much magnification..

M41 OC in CMa: Visible naked eye - don't remember much.. Thru 40mm: Curved lines

M46-M47 OC pair in Pup: Thru 40mm.. M46-M47 barely fits in same view.. M46 stars are pinpoint and concentrated like double cluster.. while M47 is normal dispersed bright stars. 25inch SDAA scope thru 31mm (2500mm focal) shows a nebula.. impressive view. In the nebula itself there was a concentric circle (i think).. indeed impressive.. Thru my 32mm. barely visible for me.. 25mm impressive.. bluish visible.. cluster and PN in it indeed impressive.. 6mm was still good - 10mm lost it.. M46 farther than M47.. PN is actually not in M46 but much closer to us than OC.

M50 in Mon (new): Yet another OC. Don't remember much.

M93 in Pup (new): Really tiny OC.. salt-paper.. too low on horizon

M36-M38-M37 in Auriga: Quick browse. Was overhead. lil bit hard to catch it.. Visible naked eye m36-m38.. bino view was great for all three.

M44 Beehive OC in Cancer: Thru 40mm eyepiece..impressive.. beehive visible.. but 25mm view better to see beehive triangles.

M67 OC in Cancer: Yet another.. nothing impressive..

M35 OC in Gem (New): SDAA scope impressive.. bright yellowish stars. and tiny OC NGC1258 (new) next to it.. this ngc looked like M93.. fine view in my 32mm also.. seen it before thru binocular

First Dark Night with Orion XTi 10 - II

Continued..

Horsehead Nebula IC 434: Fought for it.. dark nebula.. star was too bright.. with filter 18mm and without filter on 14mm.. without filter view was better.. but still didn't see Horsehead.. need to identify the precise location.. It seems like we were looking at NGC2024 flame nebula.. we were looking at north.. we should be looking 2-3 deg south..

M1 Crab: In 40mm visible.. 32mm was good.. Know precise location. Supported all higher magnifications.. 25mm - 16mm still good.. lost location in 10mm.. No internal detail visible in higher mags.

Leo Stars: Near Regulus UGC5470 not visible.. i thought i had seen it thru Jon's 10" dob.. verify. caught all stars. Gamma is yellow and has blue companion, but separated by large margin.. Yellow color was impressive.. Watched all stars.. Denebola was too low.

Saturn: looking for Saturn in Leo.. but nothing bright.. got too confused.. but found it next to iota leonoid.. 40mm no rings.. 32mm rings as a line.. but not able to focus.. too low on horizon. verify satellite locations.. two on top (west)..one was really far.. and two below (east).. higher mags didn't help much either.. wavy view.

Leo M95-M96-M105 Triplet galaxies: Star 53 visible averted.. easy catch of galaxies. Saw lot of NGCs nearby in 40mm itself.. M95-M96, M105-NGC3384, NGC3412 (new), NGC3377 (new) next to star 52.. also by using map, located NGC3367 circular galaxy (new), NGC3338 (new). Also, 32mm/25mm mag was best view. It also showed M105-NGC3384-NGC3389. familiar 3 star alignment also.. Brightness M105 > NGC3384 > NGC3389. Large: NGC3389 > NGC3384..

Leo M65-M66-NGC3628 Triplet: Star 73 visible thru averted vision. triplet easy catch.. this triplet much better than m95-m96-m105 triplet. NGC3628 is perfect edge on. Looking at map, found all tiny guys.. NGC3593(new) and NGC3596 (new) next to theta leonoid..

TBD:
- Intelliscope battery
- Observe each object more carefully. M46 is an example of ignorance.
- Observation Plan is necessary
- Too cold out there