I added five objects to my Binocular Messier list.  All were low in the southwestern sky, soon to be out of season.  This means I have 49 of the 50 I need.  I tried to get one more…just one more.  But I was unable to detect M30 (I realize now I looked in the wrong place), M75, or M54 (both very faint).

Tonight, having finished the long drive home from Niagara Falls, slowly I turned to the sky to see that it was clearer than has been usual this late summer.  It is the time of year that two objects I had yet to add to my Binocular Messier list were well placed in the sky, just rising above the roof of my house from my back yard.  So, I added observations of M33 and M34 to the list, for a total of 44 (out of 50 needed).   M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy.  Some have seen it with the naked eye (I have not from Bowie), making it perhaps the farthest object visible with the naked eye.  M34 is an open cluster, a little larger than many (and thus, its stars can be resolved easily).

The weather has not cooperated for a while, and even tonight it wasn’t so great–look how late I stayed up looking for reasonable observing, though not great observing.  I have yet to try the new eyepiece for attaching my camera to my scope, but did binocular observations instead.  I re-did M42 and M45, and added two new non-messier observations.  Here are the newest observations.

The Milky Way was even visible.  I added two observations to the Binocular Messier list–8 to go!

Again, I fought the annoyance of car headlights (kind of like Chinese water torture…you never know when the next headlight will intrude on your observing) and observed in Sagittarius in my front yard.  Sagittarius is one of the best constellations for Messier objects.  Unfortunately, it is hard to observe from my house because it never rises very high in the southern sky.  However, I now have 40 observations out of 50 required for my Binocular Messier certificate.  I added these five tonight.

I went out again–instead of specifically looking for Perseids, I got a few Binocular Messiers.  Specifically, I observed M16, M17, M18, M24, and M25.  This brings my total up to 35 out of a needed 50.  Sagittarius, as can be seen, is a great place to find Messier objects.  However, it’s challenging too as Sagittarius is in a hard-to-observe direction from my house–I must observe from my front yard and deal with lots of lighting issues.

I went out hoping to see the Perseids meteor shower, but after half an hour of watching Cassiopeia and Perseus in light-polluted and moonlit skies and seeing nothing, I decided to try for another Binocular Messier object.  I first looked for M33, but failed to find it in the haze (it was partly cloudy).  But then I found M11, the Wild Duck Cluster.  It is one of a handful of binocular objects with a definite shape to it–one of the better binocular objects out there.  Here is the observation.

Here are two new telescopic sketches, of the Perseus Double Cluster, and the North America Nebula. They were both done at the star party.

I could see the Milky Way in Cygnus (near the zenith) at 1:30am last night–that is rare for south Bowie.

I posed some new observations:

Before Midnight

After Midnight

See http://astrosketches.info/blog/?page_id=42, or click “Observations” on the sidebar. The menu divides obervations into categories, and now only new-style observations are shown. After each observation category is the number of observations in that category.