Evening of Friday, August 30, 2002

I was feeling lazy this evening so I didn't bother to take out my
'scope. However, I did spend about 45 minutes outside with my 7x50
binoculars. The sky was amazing! I walked into the field across the
street to get away from the trees around my house. This gave me a good
view of most of the sky including to the south.

The Milky Way was incredibly pronounced. The star clouds in Sgr and Sct
were dramatic. I could easily make out the Lagoon Nebula with my naked
eye despite its low altitude. Cyg, overhead, was also especially
beautiful. With averted vision I was able to see extensive structure
throughout the Milky Way. Many complex dark lanes were visible. It
actually looked somewhat like a picture of an edge-on galaxy as taken
with a large telescope. Very cool.

In other parts of the sky M31 was brightly visible as was the double
cluster. I noticed several satellites and a few faint meteors. M33 was
just above the horizon and not visible to the naked eye, but it was an
easy target in the binoculars.

I spent quite a bit of time scanning around the star clouds of the Milky
Way using the binoculars. I saw too many objects to name. M22 in Sgr
seemed especially nice. In Cyg it seemed like I was able to make out the
North American Nebula.

I spent at least 30 minutes observing with no lights at all. My eyes
thus had time to dark adapt fairly well. I studied a couple of star
fields in Cyg and then later compared what I saw with the AAVSO atlas. I
was able to see magnitude 5.9 stars without too much trouble. I'm
guessing that the limiting magnitude was in the vicinity of 6.1.

I'm looking forward to more good nights in the coming weeks!