Finally! Found my first Messier target, M13 - Great Cluster in Hercules! - Globular Cluster in Hercules constellation. It made me stay out there an extra 3 hours looking for more targets.

Everything changes once you find something your actually looking for. I found M13 with my 24mm Panoptic, it stood out like a sore thumb, a nice blotch right in the middle of the dark sky between HIP 81833 and HIP 81693 A.

I than used a 9mm on it, and than a 5mm, it looked fantastic. I wonder why, the 5mm Pentax XW has a type of extra tint, I would have liked to have seen it more clearer. It still looked great though.

The cloud cover in my region was 5/5 which is great, Transparency 4/5, but Seeing was 3/5, Darkness was all black between 12-3am when I was out.

I started looking for some double stars in and around Bootes and Corona Borealis but I realize how badly I need a LED red light flashlight now. I also have a Deepmap 600 but I just dont like the way everything is positioned on it. It's not at all like the way things appear on Stellarium, which would probably be ideal to have on a laptop next to you, unfortunately I have to go upstairs in my house to look at it.

I will have to go out there with a LED flashlight and a book I bought called Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders.

By the time I realized where M5 actually was, it was sinking down the horizon. I'll find it tonight if it's not cloudy.

Same thing for M10 and M12 inside Ophiuchus, I could not locate them in time.

I also found my first Open Cluster (IC 4665 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC_4665 ) right on top of Cebalrai, I did not know what exactly an open cluster was, but I did notice a beautiful pattern of closely spread out stars which looked really cool!

Afterwards I started looking at Jupiter which was in the south coming westwards towards me, It stood out like a sore thumb, I could easily see Io, Ganymede and Europa and Callisto on the other side. I noticed the 2 wide bands on Jupiter and for a sec I thought I saw "the eye"!

I desperately tried to find Neptune as well, I may have been looking at it and HIP 108036 (m cap).

Overall this was a great night for me, finally got to use all the equipment I had been collecting the last 2 months.

Everything changes once you find a target that your looking for, that is the funnest part for me, having to star hop looking for a target and than finding it. I just have to get a red flashlight now and bring out some books and my planisphere and map.

Thx for all your targets, I know I'm going to find many of them!