Quick, before the moon rises

Yeah yeah yeah. I'm packing boxes, but I'll certainly take a bit of clear moonless time out, not that there will be all that much, I'm writing this at 8:22 and the moon official rose 4 minutes ago.

Anyway, I wanted to see if I could grab M46 from Manchester. No such luck. I had hoped with the moon being below the horizon it just might be possible. Sadly, the sodium vapor glow just wouldn't let it come through. M47 and M41 were nice and easy. I counted 11 in both of them.

So then I went out back just to see what "moonless" did to my previous 3 targets, M36, M37 and M38. M38 was much easier than before, but I guess that that wasn't too surprising. What was surprising to me that was, with averted vision, M36 was showing stars, just just a dim fuzz. I couldn't count them because when I looked, they disappered into the fuzz. I guess with practice I'll be able to count with averted vision.

So then, feeling lucky, I tried for M35. Hey, I got it! It easily resolved into stars, I counted but I forgot the total! I looked for NGC 2158, did not expect to see it and was not too disappointed when I didn't see it. Maybe in Truro.

The Pleiades showed 3 stars to the naked eye, thought I'd through that it for you folks with dark sites and that was with averted vision! I only got 1 with direct vision. (And no, I don't know why I could count 3 with averted here and not on M36, maybe it was the separation?)

I recall seeing the Beehive Cluster, aka Praesepe, aka M44. I had never seen it before. Wow, that is a great one! Certainly a binocular object. With no dark adaptation I counted 42 stars, quite beautiful. It certainly rivals the Pleiades for the wow factor.

My previous favorite was M7, the open cluster in Sagitarius (hmmm, maybe Scorpio, depending on where the boundary is, I sure don't know.) I guess I can have a summer favorite and a winter pair of favorites, no?

Back to the boxes...