Hello astronomy fans! ;D I got out for four and a half hours tonight, and got my first look at Venus for this observing cycle! It has very near the western horizon, but I got my scope on it and followed it down. It's nearly full, but waning gibbous. The low angle made the atmosphere glow red on the lower side and green on the upper. At times it must have streched 10' or more. Weird, but cool.
Jupiter showed all 4 Galilean moons and the Great Red Spot was easily visible.
I got 4 Herschel objects, NGC's 659 and 663 in Casseopia (open clusters, 663 is the better of the two) open cluster 7142 in Cepheus (very dim, and a real challenge to find. I thank Steve O'Meara's book on the Herschel 400 list for pinning this one down.) and NGC 772 the spiral galaxy in Aries that Duane bagged at our last Eagle Bluff outing.
I also got observations on both Uranus and Neptune. I am going to follow those two planets throughout the fall season and track their progress thru Aquarius and Capricorn, respectively. Then I'm going to send in my observations on the planets and see if I qualify for the Planetary Observers certificate.
I finished with binocular looks at the Andromeda Galaxy with M32, the Perseus Double Cluster and Stock 2, the Alpha Perseus Association, the Pleadies, and telescopic looks at NGC 7293 (the Helix Nebula) and the Moon. (Too tired to get a Lunar II observation in).
What AGNFA! 🙂