Observing Report -- July 18, 2015

Wow, so the last time I went out with the scope was May -- it's amazing it's been so long. I drove up to Seymour Mountain, but there was some kind of party int he woods where folks usually observe. Turned around and drove out to Boundary Bay, wondering why I'm not paying for a RASC membership. There was a beautiful crescent moon setting next to Venus as I drove out.

Since it's 2.55am as I write this, let's get to the good parts: what I saw! (Oh, except to say I used the Dob this time.)

• Saturn was low in the slop, but still pretty to look at. Cassinni Division popped in and out iwth the 6mm (100X).

• Double-double: coud not split.

• Star test: same as always; rings all the way in on one side, hole in the middle on the other side. Need to figure out what this means.

• Omega Serpentis -- nothing much to look at, but it holds an exoplanet and that's pretty cool. 1.7x mass of Jupiter, 277 day period, and 273 light years away.

• On a whim, tried for NGC 5990 which was right near Omega Serpentis; no luck finding it.

• Found M5 pretty easily.

• Found M80 -- new Messier! Harder to pick out than M4 was. No resolution -- just a q-tip.

• M19 -- easy enough to find in binos. Maybe some resolution at 100X but that's suspicous.

• M13 -- oldie but goodie. And I found NGC6202 for the first time! Seemed fairly obvious -- not sure if that's the night, the locatiom or getting used to things.

• M92: aww, I love globs I can resolve.

• NGC 5985, 5982 & 5981 -- took a lot of time with these. I got 5982 w/AV, but couldn't see the other to.

• M11 -- wow, just wow.