Observing Report -- October 27, 2013

A month and more since I've been out. Though I have sat on my porch sketching the moon -- but it was awkward tonight; setting up Neptune felt foreign. Still and all, a good time out at Queen's Park. What'd I see?

• Not M30 -- I was hoping for a brief window of opportunity as it cleared the local trees, but no luck.

• Not Neptune or Uranus either, or at least not recognizably. I went out w/no cooldown time, and in the 10mm eyepiece everything looked non-stellar. Interesting discrepancy between Neptune's position calculated by the hand controller and what's on the chart in Sky and Telescope. I shoulda sketched both to see if I got lucky, but I didn't.

• M31 -- easy, of course, but I also saw M32 -- from the burbs, no less No sign of M110. Well, maybe a little, but nothing definite.

• M33 -- just for fun, and no. Again, maybe something, but nothing I could be even half confident in.

• M39 -- now that's more like it! Lovely OC in Cygnus, bright and obvious and beautiful. Neat "5" shape as seen through the Meade. Big and sprawling and obvious...just the way I like my open clusters.

• M72 -- tried again (though I'd forgotten about the last attempt), and nothing.

• M103 -- very nice! Small. Reminds me of an Xmas tree.

• M52 -- also pretty. Sketched, but I was getting cold and tired by this point.

• Double Cluster -- ahhhhhh. It has been too long. Man, that's lovely. Found the red stars in NGc 884.

And with that I packed up and went home. Some other notes:

• New Messiers: M39, M52 and M103 That brings me up to 57 Messiers -- whoohoo! Three more and I meet my goal of hitting 60 this year.

• Scope was just starting to dew up when I packed up. Coulda been the few minutes w/the dew shield off while I struck camp, but I doubt it.

• Made the mistake of not wearing proper boots out. Don't do that again.

• Right when I was leaving I saw Auriga, and then Taurus and the Pleides right below them. Very nice!