Observations

Just after setting up my telescope, I saw a rather impressive meteor. It left a long, persistent trail. It was yellow. I suspect that it was an early Geminid. The direction of motion was consistent with that guess.

There were some clouds floating through the area tonight. The temperature was about 24d F.

NOTES

This object was, as usual, a showpiece. It was very bright and quite spectacular. I used the 25mm eyepiece this evening. I didn't bother to explore any higher powers. I could see quite a bit of detail and structure in the outer portions of the nebula. I noticed also that theta Ori, really a collection of four stars in the heart of the nebula, make good stars on which to focus the telescope precisely.

It also appeared to me that I could see some nebulosity (is this really a word?) surrounding iota Ori just a bit south of the main nebula. This might have been NGC-1980. However it might have also been glare. In addition, I looked for NGC-1977 surrounding 42 and 45 Ori to the north of the main nebula. My view was inconclusive. The glare from the stars made it hard to distinguish any nebula that might have been present.

NOTES

Both of these clusters were visible in binoculars as small little fuzz balls. In the 25 mm, they looked fairly uninteresting. NGC-1807 was the smaller of the two. NGC-1817 was larger and seems to contain more stars. In fact, NGC-1817 showed quite a few stars with averted vision. It is probably a rich cluster when seen with a larger 'scope. NGC-1807 showed a small core of faint fuzziness with averted vision, so there was probably more there as well. Both clusters were easily visible in the same field of view.

NOTES

This is a rather large cluster. It's easy to see in binoculars. In fact, it looks very nice in the binoculars as a granular, fuzzy ball. In the telescope, it fills the field of view (25 mm eyepiece). Although there are some hints of fainter stars, the telescope view is really too spread out to look good.

NOTES

Bright. It looked mostly spherical with the 25 mm eyepiece. Using averted vision, I could get hints of its true oblong shape. The background field was very pretty. There were no bright stars, but there were quite a few faint ones that made for an interesting view. This is a nice object.

NOTES

This was a very large cluster. It was a very nice object in the binoculars. It could be resolved into stars, but it also left some things to the imagination as well. I was unable to get this object in the 'scope due to clouds.