Hi VTAstro folks, I took advantage of the beautiful dark skies over Vermont last night to do a mini-messier marathon. I say mini because I only bagged 48 objects and went to be around midnight, but it was fun none-the-less. I used a 5.5" refractor(TEC140) and mostly 18, 10 and 8 mm eyepieces. Most of the messier objects don't need a lot of magnification. I started with M1, which was just about the hardest object to see because it wasn't entirely dark when I was looking for it. With so much time at the eyepiece my eye was getting fatigued, and found that putting my hand over my left eye and keeping it open significantly lessoned my fatigue while actually improving my view significantly. I was surprised at how much better globular clusters looked with both eyes open. You could say it was an 'eye opening' experience for me (smile). In any case, it was great fun and my neighbors facilitated my fun by turning off their lights. I wish I had more staying power because just before going to bed, after putting the scope away, I had to take the dog out and Scorpious was rising in the south-east and it was just gorgeous. Doing that bunch of lower southern objects would requite me to either use a different site, or move my scope out back of my house. The skies were unusually gorgeous last night with minimal dew and moisture in the air so nothing was dewing up. Perfect for these kinds of objects.
Terri
