Equipment: 16” Dobsonian, 55mm eyepiece, Paracorr.
New objects observed: none
Previously viewed objects: Messier 81, Messier 82, Messier 3
Not a good night, it turned out. Mt. Rainier looked pretty good from my window, so I thought I might be able to pull off some quality observing, but it was not to be. I initially tried looking for some Herschel 400 objects, but wasn’t having any luck there. To get a feel for the overall quality of the night, I looked at Messier 81, 82, and 3, since they would be in pretty good positions and should be fairly easy to find.
I've fairly diligently kept up keeping records of what I've been observing, either by tweeting about it or noting it in the notes on my iPhone or in SkySafari (also on my iPhone). It's been a pretty brutal last year and a half or so, weatherwise, so I had surprisingly few chances to even get out and observe anything. Plus, once you've fallen behind a bit it's hard to pick yourself up and get caught up.
Equipment: Orion Skyview 6 Deluxe EQ, using the 32, 25, 10, 6, and 4 mm eyepieces, and the 2x Barlow with the 6mm.
New objects observed: M3, M53
Previous objects observed: M81, M82, Mars, Saturn, M94
Notes:
Probably the last good night for a while. Weather's supposed to turn cloudy again, and the moon's rising later and waxing anyway.
M81 & M82 weren't particularly bright, but they were visible. Found M94 again without too much trouble, but while I spent a good fair while trying to chase down other galaxies, I didn't have any luck.