I arrived on 2/16 at about 5:30pm for a night of solo observing. It was cloudy most of the day, but the sky cleared out between 5-6pm. It was very cold, getting down to 27F by the time I left at 2:10am. It was also incredibly dry. At 2:10am, the humidity was only 57%! There was no dew at all. The only real problem with the weather was the wind, which would occasionally shake the scope a bit. It mostly wasn't a problem.
After getting setup (including very careful collimation), I snapped the attached picture and then started into the pizza I'd brought along. Soon it was dark enough to observe.
I went for the Orion Nebula right off the bat, and even while I was still focusing, I immediately saw 6 stars in the Trapezium. It wasn't even dark yet, and the air was incredibly still. I knew I was in for a great session.
About this time, a car passed by, turned around, and came back. A guy got out, and rather than give the typical "Hey, is that a canon?" question, this guy was also an amateur astronomer. "John" was a member of the Raleigh Astronomy Club apparently a long time ago, has some experience building scopes, and was very friendly. I encouraged him to get on our email list and come out for an observing session some time.
I had a LONG list of objects to find, so I didn't take detailed notes on everything. I tried to focus on whatever was high in the south - west quarter of the sky, since that seems to be the darkest area at Farrington. I tried to go with objects that the "Night Sky Observer's Guide" said would be visible in an 8" scope and had a rating of 3+ stars. It was amazing how many of those objects I couldn't detect at all in my 18" scope.
I started around Triangulum and worked my way up into Perseus and Taurus. Here we go:
Venus: incredibly bright, despite being maybe 40% illuminated. After dark, Venus was producing a lot of light pollution in its part of the sky. I stayed at least 20 degrees away from it until it set.
M31 Andromeda Galaxy: bright as always, with the major dust lane on the left side very visible.
NGC 672: very faint galaxy. I could only see the central bar. I could not see its companion IC 1727 at all.
Cr21: A very bright, nice cluster in the shape of an ear. I stumbled on this while star hopping my way to NGC 672.
NGC 925: another faint galaxy, no detail detected.
NGC 1023: small, but bright galaxy. Very nice!
M33 Triangulum Galaxy: no detail visible
M34: impressive open cluster. The clarity was amazing.
Double Cluster: wow! Again, the clarity was really impressive. I put a lot of effort into collimation, which combined with the exceptionally dry air to make this view incredible.
NGC 891: a relatively faint, but large edge-on galaxy. Interesting to see, but there was no inner detail to be had.
M76 Little Dumbbell: excellent! I pushed this up to 410x, and it still looked great! I could see the "dent" in the top of it and the nodes on the sides. If you have the "Night Sky Observer's Guide", my view looked just like the picture on p297 of volume 1, except obviously not as bright.
NGC 957: cute open cluster, but not very bright.
NGC 1245: faint, dense open cluster with lots of unresolvable stars. I had about 121x on it, so if I'd gone up to 200 or 300x, it probably would have cleaned the image up. I just didn't have the interest to bother on this object.
IC 2003: tiny reflection nebula in Perseus. At 121x, I couldn't distinguish it from a star. At 293x, it was obviously a bright disk.
NGC 1514: this planetary nebula in Taurus was stunning at 205x with an OIII filter. A central star was obvious with a ring of sense nebula around it.
NGC 1491: small emission nebula in Perseus that was faint, but obviously shaped like a triangle. Two sides were dense, with the area in between just a faint cloudiness.
NGC 1513: Small but bright open cluster. This was shaped like a backwards comma.
Now I jumped over to Orion and worked my way up into Gemini.
NGC 1528: large open cluster that is both bright and dense. It was shaped like a long wedge.
M78: this nebula was very nice at 205x, but an OIII filter actually made it worse.
NGC 2022: small, bright disk at 293x. This is a nice object in Orion that probably gets overlooked too often.
NGC 2261 Hubble's Variable Nebula: small, but very nice with great detail at 293x. The air was still very steady.
Σ953: a stunning double star in Monoceros. I stumbled on this while looking for NGC 2261 and needing a star to adjust focus on. This was the closest star in my finder of appropriate magnitude. These two are about even brightness, one being very yellow, and the other very blue. Quite a gem!
NGC 2264 X-mas Tree: Not much detail here. I couldn't see much nebulosity, but the star cluster was nice.
M35: huge open cluster that is very nice to observe. Bright with lots of stars, but not particularly dense.
NGC 2158: a companion to M35, this open cluster is much smaller and fainter, but very dense. I wrote in my notes that it must be much farther, and sure enough, it is about 5 times farther from us than M35.
M1 Crab Nebula: large, very imposing nebula. its non-circular shape seems somehow menacing. I spent a lot of time on this object at MASP, so on this evening I didn't linger.
NGC 2266: beautiful! This is a very dense open cluster that sits in an already very heavily-populated star field.
NGC 2392 Eskimo: very bright ball of nebulosity with a central star.
NGC 2420: Beautiful little open cluster that is very dense.
At this point I jumped to a group of objects that were in Puppis and Hydra, both low in the sky.
NGC 2467: this nebula was very low in the sky. I could have been kneeling while looking through the eyepiece. It was very interesting, but seeing a picture now, I missed a lot of it. I saw a fair amount of detail at 121x with an OIII filter. I sketched a donut-shaped nebula with an obvious hole in the middle, and a knob of some sort on the left side.
M93: very bright open cluster- spectacular!
M47: this open cluster was bright, but not particularly dense.
M46: this is the open cluster with a small ring-shaped nebula superimposed. At 121x with a UHC filter, this was breath-taking. The filter didn't dim the stars hardly at all, but really brought out the contrast and gave the nebula a bit more definition.
My final jump was to Cancer and Leo, which by now were high in the SW sky. Orion was setting!
NGC 2683: WOW! this is a very bright edge-on galaxy that looked great at 205x.
M44 Beehive: this open cluster is too big for my scope. I think binoculars would have been much better.
M67: big, dense open cluster that is very bright.
Abell 31: despite a recommendation from Sky & Telescope's March issue that this nebula was visible in a 10" scope in "semirural skies", I could not detect it at all, even with a UHC or OIII filter.
NGC 2775: this galaxy appeared small, but with a bright and dense core.
Saturn: By request, I paid special attention to Saturn. I saw four moons: Dione, Titan, Rhea, and Tethys. I knew where Enceladus was supposed to be, but I could not see it. I pushed the magnification up to 410x, and the view was still very clear! If I'd brought my barlow, I would have gone for 600x. The rings mostly looked like straight lines extending from the sides of the planet, but in moments of exceptionally still air, I could see dark space through the rings on either side of the planet! I doubted myself at first, but I was able to repeat the observation many times. In those moments when I could separate the near and far parts of the rings just before they crossed the planet, the rings themselves looked incredibly thin. There was a distinct band across the planet, about 25% of the way from the equator to the north pole. I felt like I was on the verge of seeing some detail in the southern hemisphere, but it never materialized. There was also a very distinct but thin shadow, which appeared to be immediately under the rings where they cross in front of the planet. The planet and rings appeared bright yellow.
