Hello astronomy fans! I had a very good night tonight. I got a nice observation of Venus in, and then took in a long observation of Jupiter.
Jupiter had all four of the Galliean moons to the west of the planet, (the inner two very close and no moon was more than 3 Jupiter planet widths away). It was amazing!
I had an unsuccessfull search for NGC 6118, the "Blinking Galaxy" in Serpens Caput, and NGC 6959, a globular cluster in Sagittarius, (Both were too low to bag).
I did nail NGC 1513, an open star cluster in Perserus for the Herschel 400 quest. It is an obscure little star cluster, and took some careful starhopping to get to. It looks like a little circle of stars that has about 10 or 11 members at 80X. If you crank it up, you can get more, but it still remainds a very challenging object.
The Moon rose at that time, and while the coyotes were howling to beat hell, I got my second observation on the Moon risisng on consecutive months (while the Moon was 4 days past full – 1st observation on Sept. 19th and the second on Oct. 18th). The Moon must be in a stable part of its orbit this time of year because it rose nearly over the same spot of the only cluster of trees to the NE horizon.
I finished the night with a Lunar II observation of Promontarium Archerusiusm. It is the prominent range of mountains that borders the Sea of Serenity on its southern edge.
It is a very cool feature of the Moon.
It got to be cold, but all in all, it was a glorious night for astronomy!