Two Eyes & A Couple Of Messiers

Hi there

Got out last night for a time with my 10X50 binos, I'm giving up telescopic observations for the time being and concentrating on bino observing. I have a pair if 10X50s at the moment, but I'm getting the money together for a larger pair, hopefully sometime soon.

I decided to hunt down some Messiers, I'm wondering how many of the 110 objects fall into the range of 10X50s and last night I bagged this lot:

M15 A bright object, definitely non stellar giving off a fuzzy appearance, the core stood out nicely.
M56 Very small and stellar in appearance.
M29 A large nebulous patch with no individual stars seen.
M39 A big cluster, 6 stars were easily seen forming two squat isosceles triangles with their apexes pointing towards each other. More cluster member were a hazy background patch.
M27 Large and round, best seen with averted vision, there was no hint of the "bites".
M71 Appeared as a stellar object.
M92 A uniform diffuse ball of light.
M13 I would say that M13 appeared to be the same size as M27, the non stellar nature of this glob is plain to see and averted vision showed a slight condensation towards the core.
M2 An out of focus star that displayed a uniform face.
M31 Highly elongated galaxy, the core is the dominant feature with the diffuse arms extended into space.
M103 A tight knot in the Milky Way, 3 stars in a broken line sit in the foreground with the rest of the cluster unresolved behind.

I tried for M57, M32, M110 and M33 without success, perhaps higher elevation and darker skies are required.

One thing I rediscovered was star hopping, it was something I always enjoyed doing and when I went GoTo I stopped. There's a great sense of hunting something down and the thrill when the desired object is found.

I've managed 11 objects, one tenth down, nine tenths to go.

Paul

nice going Paul,
I would have thought that M57 would be visible as a faint almost stellar point.
M33 is a toughie, no surprise for me that you didnt get it, I've never seen it in binos, although I'm sure others have.

Paul

If your skies are good enough to show you M74, then you should be able to see all the others. M74 is even fainter and harder to see than M33, but round about this time of year is the best time to find it. You'll have to wait a while to bag them all. Good luck.

Many times M33 was better seen in my 10x50 finder then through 20" Newtonian scope.
I live in Athlone suburb.
Cheers

I forgot to mention that when I was observing M31, a meteor streaked through the field of view, it was orange in colour and very fast. Initially I thought it might have been a Taurid, but it was coming from the wrong direction.