TheSkySearchers

Last evening it was clear-ish for a little while so I took that opportunity to break out the Oberwerk 100 SD.

From my back yard I got to play around a little. M42, M48, M45, the Hyades, Venus, and a little sliver of moonwere the available targets. There was a slight thin cloud cover but bright objects were peering through. Venus was sitting just over the moon and just under M45. That realm of the sky was relatively clear.

Neighbors decided to cook out on the deck so lights became an issue. I moved upfront to the driveway. It’s lit up with streetlights but I still had a good vantage point to view the moon and Venus.

Nice pic; looks like my view last night... Those are some really nice bino's, I bet the views were great!

All the best,

Hello Sonny. Upon mouse click up magnification your image becomes vertical, and reveals the excellent image that you captured. Thanks for sharing this on here Sonny, and that Oberwerk 100 SD that you have pictured is a fine instrument.

Great set of binos, definitely a cut above! Thanks for showing us the pic Sonny.

Last night I had clear sky for the early part of the night. I got Venus and most of M45 squeezed into a 2.8 degree field. Very pretty...... Scanned the Orion complex a bit and then blinded myself with the half moon.
My area weather report has mostly cloudy with a period of about 2 hours of partly cloudy. I am going to use that time to try to glimpse Venus passing through the Pleiades. Crossing my fingers.

No luck.....just a gray heavy sheet of clouds with no breaks.....and it looks worse for tonight.

Tonight the weather gave me a small break. The prediction was mostly cloudy but the early evening was patchy with big enough breaks to squeeze in some views. It was not fully dark when I set up but the moon was in the clear. I popped in a pair of 7mm ep’s into the BT100 and peered at it for a little while until clouds obscured it. The western sky cleared a bit so I locked onto Venus. At 80x you can make out the shape as halfmoon like. I swapped out the ep’s with a 14mm pair and the sky was still a bit blue. I slewed over to M45 and could only see the dipper shape. I stayed focused on it as the sky darkened and I could see the fainter stars turning on one by one. I switched out the ep’s again, this time going with 22’s. I pointed at the moon again which had little translucent clouds passing in front of it. Was kind of eerie looking. I managed a pic through the eyepiece with my phone. The sky was on its way to becoming a full sheet of white so I packed up and went in the house. Not a long session but I won’t complain.

Last night was another non-predicted Clear-ish Sky. Just some translucent patches of clouds. The moon was lighting up my yard enough to be able to read. I scanned the Orion complex then swept through the Hyades. I have never considered the Hyades to be anything special often ignoring it. I guess that is because it didn’t look like much in the limited small fields of my previous instruments. My opinion has changed.....Scanning that region at 2.8 degrees is stunning including NGC 1647 which was a new one for me.
M36, M37, and M38 in Auriga were visible however they lacked contrast due to the bright moonlit sky.
After getting my fill of clusters I turned to the bright objects. Venus and then the moon. At 8x and 0.9 degrees I noticed an odd looking star at the fields edge at about the 9 o’clock position. It was 4th magnitude variable star c Virginis. Very cool!