Oohh Aahh the Ring Nebula!

—Fresh off of my morning viewing session that bagged three new planets to my list of ’seen’ objects, I decided to beat the weather and try again last night. Cool night, and clear skies inspired another jaunt down the hill with my scope and goodies.

—First up for good measure was Saturn again. This time I got to show the wife and she replied by saying “Oh my God!” as she stared through the EP. Nothing feels quite so good when you can impress someone with your ability to find objects in the sky! She wants me to reset the scope several times so she can see it over and over again. The wife then runs off to watch the family of raccoons that have taken to visiting us in the early evening to raid the birdfeeders.

—I sit down with my completely inadequate star maps and start looking for a couple of targets. First one that really catches my eye is the Ring Nebula. I am a bit intimidated about finding my first Messier through my scope, but quite game for the challenge.  First find Vega, do a little star hopping, and bam there it is! Not much more than a little fuzzy, but there it is! I use my 6mm to take a better look and can’t hardly see a thing. Yup there is that aperture fever that I knew I was going to get…

—Then I decide to look for the North American Nebula. After a long sky hunt I lose hope on finding it and strike it up to having to small a scope. Then before I know it the clouds are rolling in from the North. Curse my luck! Oh well there will always be another night.

—So up the hill I tote the goodies. My list of ‘have seens’ grew by one, and that makes a good night under any circumstances.