M13, my first Messier object as I rediscover the night sky! This is only the third deep space object I've seen. The other two were the Ring Nebula in Lyra and the Orion Nebula in Orion. M13 was barely visible in the 6x30 finder but was a big and bright fuzzy  object in the 26mm Plossl. Higher power started to resolve some of the stars but the core remained a dense blurry bright spot. Factors affecting my ability to resolve Image from DeepSky 98. the individual stars in the cluster included the light polluted location, probably poor collimation, and a poor mount making focusing difficult. But who cares about that, it was a fascinating site!    I had asked the fine people of sci.astro.amatuer what sort of objects I should try to find and they suggested several including M13 and M3. I couldn't find M3 and I also struck out trying to locate M51. I thought it would befun to try and find M51 because there has been a thread in sci.astro.amateur lately about whether or not it is difficult to find. I'm pretty sure my failure to find M51 and M3 are because of my total lack of star-hopping ability. Next time out I am going to concentrate on simply star-hopping my way around. I'll start practicing on the Big Dipper and once I can star-hop to the major stars there I will try for M51 again.

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