I finally had all three things at once: (1) Clear night, (2) Cool, bug-free night, and (3) Sagitarius. So, I went outside and started spotting as many Messier objects as I could. Last year I kept getting lost in Sagitarius. I saw lots of Messier objects - but I didn't know what they were. One cluster looked like the next. This time I knew what I was looking for and knew what it was when I found it [okay, the upper left area was difficult but I think I go it].

I started in the bottom of the "teapot" because I thought that M54, M70 and M69 would be easy to pick out in a row. I couldn't find any of them. I guess the sky wasn't that dark after all. They were all 9th mag objects which is the very fringe of my detection with the AstroScan.

So I moved on to my 2nd favorite nebula: M8, the Lagoon Nebula. I also picked out M20, the Trifid Nebula and then started star hopping form cluster to cluster to catch the following: M21, M25, M22, M24 and M18. They were mostly large open clusters. Some were pretty and one had a slight nebulosity [or it seemed to] though the book listed it as an open cluster. This is the area where I was losing my sense of direction a little. The Swan Nebula was small but obviously a nebula.

I saw the Eagle Nebula. It looked different from the Hubble photos I had seen. :-) I found the open clusters M6 & M7 and then looked at the Cat's Eyes in the tail of Scorpious. These are the most interesting stars in the sky, IMHO. They seem to be constantly osillating between red and blue even to the naked eye. Check it out!

I also saw M57: The Ring Nebula. If I diverted my eye I could see it and at times it appeared to have a hole in the center. Mostly it appeared as a barely detectable blurry star. Still, not bad for a 9th mag object and a 4" scope [I guess]. Oh yeah, the neat thing about this was I spotted it with very low power [using the 15mm] rather easily.

My first look at Jupiter this season. It looked good. I could see a third band in addition to NEB and SEB. The atmosphere was a little wiggley but it was sharp through the Nagler 7mm. All four moons were on the left and were zig-zagged rather than in the usual staright line alignment. I must be askew to there orbital plane for the first time while observing Jupiter.

All in all - a very good night.