Pretty nice night. The sky was extremely clear and the night had cooled off enough to keep the mosquitos away. The Milky Way was quite obvious even before my eyes had adjusted. It was so clear that I was able to split the binary star, Albiero (in Cynus) with low power. Very cool. As I have said before, it's about the best binary: hot blue and red giant. Nice contrast.

Sagetaruis: Started off with M8, The Lagoon Nebula [a fav]. I can usually spot this with the naked eye. Incidenly, I noticed a really pretty blue star in the upper left part of the tea pot's handle. The seeing was uncommonly clear and sharp. I hit most of the Messier objects here pretty quickly and easily (except M7 and one other, too close to the horizon, I guess). Viewed: M6, M8, M16, M17, M18, M20, M21, M22, M23, M28 and then zipped up and got M11 (from another constellation). Missed M62 and M4 as well.

I saw one shooting star and 3 satellites. One really bright one, about mag 2, was running south to north. I looked at it - just looked like a really bright star. The other I spotted in the scope while trying to see M92 in Hercules. I never did see M92 or M13 - I think it's about time for a larger scope!

Looked for M27, The Dumbell nebula - couldn't find it (this time). Had a quick look at M29, also in Cynus. I looked for M51, sort of half heartedly - no luck (this time). I took a quick glance at Mars. Knowing that it didn't look that good at opposition, I didn't expect much. I was a tiny red dot. I did manage to see M31 before going in for the evening.