Last night was magnificent, perfectly clear. I spent ages looking at the Milky Way with the naked eye, 20x80 binoculars and a 12" scope.
I estimate the brightest part of the Milky Way, in Sgr, to be magnitude 3. Our Galaxy is one of the objects in the All Sky M Cat.
This
http://picasaweb.google.com/dunlop18...essierCatalog# has been updated with the addition of the PNs NGC 2440 and NGC 6302.