Tonight was my first real night out in a couple weeks. Good transparency, good seeing. It’s not getting officially dark until about 9:40pm, but I went out at 8:50pm to do my first summer observing session. I planned four objects to observe in Sky Safari Plus, and went to work. Saturn and Mars weren’t on my list by why pass up the chance to observe them? Saturn was spectacular and I investigated the moons for a couple minutes. Tethys, Rhea, Dione, and Titan were all easily visible but nothing new. Mars was tiny and unspectacular. I went over to M51, the first object on my list. It was a good view but not the best I have had. Then I observed brilliant M13, stars shining to the core with averted vision at 150x with my 8mm Baader Hyperion. My focuser was very stiff tonight, which made it difficult when switching between the 21 and 8mm Hyperion. Next stop was M5, a very nice Globular cluster. Stars extended far beyond the core with averted vision. Almost as impressive as M13. Last object on the list was M64, the Black Eye Galaxy. The sky glow was bad in this section of the sky. It was a little challenging to find, I didn’t know which star to start at, but I used M53 as a guide. M64 had a very bright nucleus but was relatively small. I decided to stay out longer because tonight turned out to be a really good night. At about 10:00pm I found M57, a stunning planetary nebula. It’s definitely in my top two or three favorite Messier’s. I got a glimpse of the elusive M108, but still no luck with M97. I finished at 10:25pm, bagging three more Messier’s. That brings me up to 39/110. (I did not take these pictures)
M5
M64
M57
