MASP day 2

Clear skies all evening. The veil nebula was seriously mind-blowing! IIt far exceeded my expectations, even having seen it the night before. With my Panoptic 35, it was incredible, although you could still only get half of the claw section into one field of view. The triangular section in the middle, between the fork and claw, showed lots of detail.

I bumped up to my Nagler 17, and the details just popped out! Structures seem to go on forever. On the fork section, you could clearly see dense streams running along each side, with nebulosity in between. The claw was unbelievable. The middle section showed a distinctive knot region along the inward-facing wisp.

Robert and I spent a long time looking at the Cat's Eye with different eyepieces and filters, and comparing our two scopes. The central star is illusive, but once you start to detect it, it just pops out. Then you can hardly imagine how you could have missed it. Three of us had this experience.

My list:

M13
Cat's Eye
NGC 6503
Saturn Nebula (nodes clearly visible)
M77
NGC 1055
Little Dumbbell
Veil