When I first became intent upon buying a telescope (at about age 5), I wanted it mainly for the moon and planets. Although I still enjoy looking at Saturn, Jupiter and the phases of Venus now and then, I now focus [no pun intended] my attention on the Messier objects. I've always thought stars were pretty boring - through a telescope, anyway. Contellations are fun, but my scope didn't usually do much to enhance the appearance of a star - or so I thought. This next year I will focus on trying to "split binaries" on each observation. As I found from viewing Albireo tonight - stars can be pretty interesting afterall.

I had a hit list as follows:
• M2 - nope, too much moon.
• Mizor & Algol - below the horizon
• M11 & M13 - nope, too much moon or too late.
• The Double Cluster - yes, a favorite
• M31 - the core was quite visable. Looked best in 15mm.
• Pleiades - always nice, looks best in 15mm.
• M36, M37 & M38 - picked them off all in a row
• M15, M33 - forget it (lousey 1/2 moon!)
• M42 - nice as usual. Pretty good considering the moon.
• Saturn - neat view - Need to find the name of the other moon I saw.

Albiero was pretty cool. It was beautiful and multi-colored with the 28mm. I was able to split it into a blue star and a red giant with the 15mm.