Telescope Reviews: Just another one of those nights...

Conditions looked favorable last night, so I set my alarm for 3:30 A.M. and went to bed (this was around midnight). I managed to get up with the alarm and proceeded to head outside and setup my C8, with the idea of catching Saturn after it got high enough to clear my house. After allowing about 30 minutes to cool down (precisely three cups of coffee later), I decided to go after a few deep sky objects. The waning moon was hidden behind the house and Ursa Major was slightly north of directly overhead, so I thought I would start with the Owl Nebula. As anybody knows that's ever used a fork mounted SCT with a straight-thru finderscope, the most difficult place to locate anything is in the area between zenith and the pole star. Before I go any further, I also have to say that the temperature was in the mid-teens and I was wearing two sets of clothes, which made standing on my knees with my head shoved up under the scope to get to the finder even more difficult. I was attempting to starhop to the Owl Nebula, but got my wires crossed and went the wrong way. In the process, I stumbled on what looked like a comet!!! I nailed down the location and checked my charts, but they showed nothing there. Now, I've seen a few comets over the years and this one looked good. I watched it for awhile to see if it was going to move, but the moon had made its way up over my house and was shining directly in my eyes. I use an eyepiece turret, which makes repositioning the eyepiece difficult - not impossible, just difficult. So there I was, on my knees shivering with my head shoved up under the scope trying to detect movement in a faint, fuzzy patch of light while trying to shield my eyes from the waning moon - of course I saw movement! By this time, I'm contemplating the twenty plus mile bicycle ride to the Western Union office to get my telegraph off to Harvard University... (sorry, but I couldn't help it - I just finished reading Starlight Nights). Anyway, I thought I should probably do a little more investigating before getting too excited, so off to the internet I went. Of course, that was when I realized that my brand new comet already had been assigned an NGC number...

Saturn looked great by the way...

Bill