Well, armed with the Mag-7 Star Atlas (linked in one of the stickies), my 30x100 AOE binos and the parallelogram mount I threw together, I went on a rampage across the skies last night, after countless days of cloudy weather.
I started to the south, at good old Crux, hoping to get a look at the Southern Pleiades and the Carina nebula, but they were already behind the trees.
Oh well. This was the first time I had tried out the parallelogram mount for an extended period of time and found it a joy to use compared to a standard tripod 3-degree freedom mount. The only drawback was it swung around in the strong wind a bit, but once the breeze dropped, it was fantastic.
I found NGC 4755, as well as NGC 5609 and 4463 in the Coalsack, then moved over to Musca and found NGC 4833 and NGC 4372.
I jumped over to Triangulum Australe and looked at NGC 6025, then NGC 6101, which was right at the edge of my perception. (I'm sure I saw it!)
Over to Norma, to find (I think) NGC 6067 and NGC 6193.
From there I hopped over Scorpius and had a gander at Jupiter, seeing 3 moons to the upper right. Then the usual crowd in Scorpius and Sagittarius of M7, M6, the Trifid Nebula (M20), M21, the Lagoon nebula (M8), then over to M24, M25, M18 and the Omega Nebula (M17). I missed the Eagle nebula somehow in all the excitment.
I then looked more towards the zenith and saw NGC 6729 in Corona Australis, then hopped over to M55, then JUST saw M75.
At this stage I realised I was inexorably heading towards Andromeda, so I headed over to Sagitta and found M71 and thought I saw NGC 6802. I missed the Dumbbell nebula (M27), then dropped down right near the horizon and found the Ring nebula (M57) in Lyra! Woohoo! I had tried to find it previously and not been successful. Due to that part of the horizon being a bit light polluted, I thought I wouldn't see it, but there it was.
I followed along the horizon more to the north and saw M29 in Cygnus. However, all the areas of nebulosity were not visible. I don't know if my Binos are up to the job to resolve them.
I then moved further over into Andromeda and there it was, M31 in all its glory. I could JUST make out the orientation of the galaxy, but really could not see any detail of the arms, just an elongated smudge really. Not helped by the increasing light pollution from Sydney as I swung further to the East. I don't bother looking in the Eastern 1/3 of the sky, due to Sydney. I'll just have to wait as that bit of the sky swings over through the year.
As a last hurrah, I looked in the opposite direction and had a look at the Lesser Magellanic cloud, with 47 Tucana (NGC 104) and NGC 362. 47 Tucana is quite a sight.
Last of all was the Greater Magellanic cloud. I could see little knots of nebulosity and a little bit of stranding. I couldn't fit all of it in the field of view and needed to pan around a bit to take in the sight. I saw a few globs in there. Not sure which ones they were, possibly NGC 2014 and NGC 1829, although they are pretty small.
I can't wait for my Dob to arrive and really see some sights!
