The bright moon tonight but a perfectly cloudless sky made it a challenging night to observe deep sky objects in an 8 inch scope, but gave it a shot anyway. Had quite a good night.
Spent the start watching Jupiter, showing the parents etc, then looked at the moon (always do this at the start so you have your night vision back for later!).
Then had a crack at looking at some other objects in the moonlit but clear sky. Took ages finding some things, I don't have any sort of motor drive or computer system so everything has to be done by star-hopping!
Tonight I observed: M81 (Bode's Galaxy), M51a (whirlpool galaxy), NGC 6543 (Cats eye nebula), M57 (Ring nebula), NGC7662 (Blue Snowball), NGC6826 (Blinking planet nebula), M101 (Pinwheel galaxy), M31 (Andromeda galaxy and its satellites), and quite a few clusters and doubles. So not the biggest session but satisfying! The hardest for me to find was the Blue Snowball believe it or not. I figured out exactly where it was but it was just so hard to see. But eventually, there it was. Peripheral vision helps a lot in these situations, especially in a moonlit night. All in all a good night!
Celestron C8-N (200mm reflector)
Carl Zeiss 10x50's
-Amateur Astronomer, photographer, guitarist, and beer drinker-
  