Observations

I happened to wake up early this morning and I went outside to take advantage of the first good night since the new year. I was outside at 5:30am and the sky was still quite dark with little signs of twilight. It was perfectly clear and rather cold; the temperature was below -12C. I used my trusty 7x50 binoculars as my primary observing instrument and I stayed outside for only about 20 minutes.

Venus was just above the southeastern horizon. It appeared very bright against the dark sky background. In my binoculars I got a sense of a phase but I wasn't able to see that very clearly (largely due to glare). I did notice that Venus was casting shadows against the snow. They were particularly noticeable if I moved my arms; the motion made the subtle effect easier to pick up.

Mars was near Venus but didn't look very impressive in comparison. It's clearly on the far side of its orbit and relatively faint for Mars. At first I mistook it for Antares. Jupiter was well up toward the west. It's disk and two moons were readily visible in my binoculars. West isn't my best direction but the planet would have been very observable to someone with a decent west view. Saturn was not visible. Apparently it had just set.

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Very nice in the binoculars. It seemed well resolved with most, if not all, stars visible. However, the low power kept the cluster well compacted. With the naked eye M-44 appeared as a bright fuzzy spot not far from Jupiter, making for an interesting view.

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Easily visible in the binoculars and easily found by just sweeping to the "lower left" of M-44. The view was very pleasing; I don't recall M-67 being quite so nice in binoculars before.

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Easy and bright in the binoculars. It's location between two other fairly bright stars gave a pleasing effect.

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Easy and bright in the binoculars. This cluster was smaller and more condensed looking than M-13 and could be passed over as a star in such a low power instrument. I had to carefully adjust the focus of my binoculars before I could be sure I was seeing it.

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This cluster seemed very similar is size and brightness to M-13 to me. It's an excellent object. While I was observing M-5 a satellite crossed the field of view, passing rather close to the cluster. It was an unexpected treat.

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Readily visible in the binoculars but not nearly as bright as the other globular clusters I already observed this morning. Both objects were comfortably visible in the same field of view making for an interesting view.