Telescope Reviews: Last night's session...

...was much better than the previous session when the moon was full.

After the alignment I started with M13 before it got too high. It was a hazy stippled ball, brighter in the center than the outer edges. No stars resolved with the 26mm EP.

Slewed to my favorite object M57; the ring nebula. Looked a bit darker tonight, still could not see the center star with a 26mm EP. The hole definately did show up though.

Then I went on a galaxy hunt. M51 showed up quite clearly and some darker lines could barely be made out. Using averted vision and bumping the scope made them stand out a bit better, but still very, very faint.

M101, M81, M3, and M5 all eluded me last night. I don't know why I could not find these objects. Especially the larger and brighter globulars. M92 in Hercules looked good though and did not gived me fits trying to locate it.

By this time Cygnus was at about 30 degrees or so which is about the altitude I like to observe. Sitting in a chair or on a stool is a lot more comfortable than on your knees on a pad or sitting on your behind on the ground.

I covered just about everything worth looking at in Cygnus. All the open clusters, which sometimes are hard to distiguish in the 26mm from the other stars. A lower power EP would have been handy here. I also took a peek at M56 which is fairly close to the area, though I should have slewed to it after checking on M57. Again, no stars resolved
in M56 and it looked like a stippled snowball.

I saw for the first time the Dumbell nebula, M27. I could see the shape that gives it its' name and saw some dark obscuration as the photos I've seen show. It was brighter than I expected. I've read that it is a large nebula, but not very bright. It was the brightest deep-space object I saw last night.

No luck with the Pelican or North American nebulae. I think I would need a lower power eyepiece to actually see these objects. I was right in the middle of both of them and couldn't even tell. I know they are faint, and too much power, even a 26mm is probably too much for these two.

I've never seen star fields like those in Cygnus. It was like someone threw a handfull of aluminum dust on a piece of black velvet and shined a light on it. Amazing. I wandered around in there for about an hour or so, not really looking for anything, just looking.

I did try to find IC5146 to no avail. Seems to me that the bright diffuse nebula is harder to see than the planetary or emission variety.

I'm going back out tonight if it clears off after the rain and find those objects that eluded me last night.