Locale: Pelican Inlet, north of Winnipeg
Conditions:
Equipment: C80 refractor with Antares finder and
Time: 10:19 pm to 2:40 am
The scope was set to go with a finder and a new mount for my
Normally I would try to locate key stepping-stone stars with my finder, but during the past few months with the C80 I have worked out a method of measuring degrees
Arcturus – I began here to start as a jump point to M3. I visualized a rough, uneven triangle on my chart begin the search for M3. At this point in the evening astronomical darkness had not yet arrived. As the wind dropped further and darkness became more complete, the quality of the views became among the best that I have seen in a year.
M3 - a relatively bright ball of fuzz, stars discernable at the periphery, with a few skeins of stars at the edge – this site brought a modest shock of pleasure as I stumbled into it after a few minutes of searching with an 18mm ortho (I probably should have used the 28mm). The point-and-search method is so much easier with the
M92 – Moving east to Eltanin and Rastaban, I found very impressive M92, a less formidable clumping of stars, but still great to behold. Just for fun, I zoomed through the skies between M13 and M92 to begin to memorize that part of the sky using less obvious marker stars.
Alberio – I then moved back to Vega and then slightly west, and down to the little clumping of stars near in Lyra with Sheliak and Sulafat. I found the eye of the swan Alberio (Cygnus) and noted the easily split doublet.
M57 – between Sheliak and Sulafat in a line lies the smokey ring nebula or M57. I used the 28mm ES82 to locate this one, again very lucky with the
M56 – In a rough line between Sulafat and Alberio hides M56, globular cluster
The coathanger - Between Alberio and Zeta Aquila (in the feathers of the Eagle) lies a famous
M27 – Moving east, I found this large nebula, pretty and grey/white, with no discernable colour.
M71- Another globular cluster sitting halfway between γ and δ Sagitta. It is not difficult to observe, but resolution of stars was partially doable in the C80.
M29 – I swung my scope east to Cygni (Sadr) as the swan began to rear higher out of the east. The time now was ~1:45 am and the skies were properly dark – good for nebula. I picked up little M29, a modest open cluster in Cygnus, just south and west of Sadr.
Gamma cygni nebula – no bright nebula per se, but I could detect dark bands within the vicinity of this nebula in Cygni. Around gamma cygni, I let myself dark adapt for about 10 min and used my finder (best), and the main scope at very low mag (not as good) to see mainly the faint dark bands in this region.
North American nebula – My highlight of the evening. I studied my starmap, and using this orientation I could clearly see this nebula quite plainly with the naked eye and it really popped in the small 50mm finder scope. It was useless to put much power on this nebula, again best seen in the finder scope and clearly observed with my eyes. Exciting to see this clearly for the first time.
M101 – The conditions were truly good now, even in the western skies, and the time was around 2:30 am. I used Mizar and Alkaid to form an imaginary isosceles triangle to hop up to M101, and there it appeared in all its hazy faint glory. With this scope I was unable to see any
M53 – I drew imaginary lines extending north from Porrima and Vindematrix to intersect with another southerly line from Arcturus and Muphrid – and there I plonked the
This led me to try my hand at M64 – the black eye galaxy, which I found by sliding west along the azimuth… no deflection in altitude required, and there it was, with the black eye itself very prominent. I was so pleased with these finds I spent 10 minutes observing each by lateral movements in azimuth.
A very beautiful evening of amazing dark and transparent skies, thanks for reading to the bottom.
Ian
. I forgot to add that I used other EPs including the 7 mm TV Nagler to try to find the central star in M57... 
