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This was a beutiful and fun night. The seeing was not very good. However, I saw 5 new globular clusters, 2 new galaxies, and 2 new open clusters. Nine new Messier
objects have been added to the my observed list and 2 new Herschel objects have been added to the observed list.
The globular clusters were: M71, M15, M69, M2, and M75. The open clusters were: M29 and M39. The galaxies were M32 and M110.
After reading an article in Sky & Telescope's September 2001 issue entitled "Taking Your Telescope to the Limit" I decided to see how deep I could see.
The moon was over
80% in it's phase and putting out a lot of light. I also had to deal with the bad seeing, which makes seeing faint things tougher and the light pollution. Of the stars listed in the article, GSC 2642-0433 was the faintest start I could make out. It's listed as having a magnitude of 13.0. Not too shabby considering the moon's attempt to wash everything out. I wasn't able to see the central star of the Ring Nebula. I plan to try again when the moon isn't in the way.
I also made a quick observation of Uranus. Next time, I'd like to take a closer look and see if I can see its moon Titania.
Another great night under the stars. I'm really quite happy with the LX-200. My free set of eyepieces (promotion for buying an LX-200) should be coming in about a
month. That will be very nice since I really need something between my 22mm and 12.4mm eyepieces. I also need a good 9mm eyepiece to fit between the 12.4mm and 6.4mm.
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