What he said!

Right on the mark, Dawg!

If I had to follow a "plan" when I went out I likely wouldn't last long in the hobby. Rarely do I take any charts out, but I will take my laptop with Stellarium once in a while if I'm observing away from home and want it to help me locate a few objects.

Wednesday night I headed up to my favorite viewing spot (dark skies on a mountain top at 4'400 ft.) and was able to find 11 new (to me) Messier objects in about 3 hrs. Most of those were found by just pointing my 102mm ED up in the direction of where I thought the objects were, and then just poked around using the 24mm Stratus (gives me 29x). I did have to use Stellarium a bit as well as a list of the Messier objects by Constellation, as I wanted to find M51 and needed a bit of direction there. Found it after a few minutes of searching (this time..LOL). I had spent over 2 hrs. (cumulative) in the past hunting for it and Wed. finally brought success. BTW, I was alone on that mountain top, and I'm sure every bear, deer and cougar for a mile around heard me whoopping and hollering over the find..

To end the night I grabbed a cup of coffee, sat back on the tailgate of my truck and just gazed at it all with the bino's, and naked eye. By 0100 the Moon was gone, and the Milky Way was ever brightening in it's arc that is born from Sag....it was a sight to behold, for sure.

As Russ said...we're all different, and while for some the science brings the excitement (which is cool too!), for others it just gazing at the heavens above and seeing whatever it is we can find that holds our interest.

Mis Dos Centavos...;)

Mike