M104 Sombrero Galaxy and Ngc3242 Ghost of Jupiter are well placed for viewing this time of the year so last night I had a good look at these two amazing objects. I have viewed The Ghost with high magnification on other occasions using a go to f/10 scope, it was a grey round planetary fairly bright with a well defined edge. This time I was finding it using my 12" dob and a Telrad finder, so a wide field 30mm ep at 50x was my weapon of chose to find this planetary manually. Obviously when I found it, it was a much smaller orb, but to my surprise it was an amazing green aqua colour. I had now seen the colour that many other people have observed in this object. Just gos to show that image size is very important to take into consideration when planing a viewing session. The Sombrero Galaxy is another object that I have only ever seen at higher mag, awesome galaxy from a dark site nice and bright in a larger scope. From the city you can still see it's central bulge and dark dust lane it's not to hard to see why it coped this common name. With low power the M104 galaxy showed up as a thin streak of light still bright with a hint of dust lane but no central bulge was visible. The best thing about my low power view of M104 was seeing the hockey stick asterism in the same fov, it looks like any other bunch of stars but you put them together with the Sombrero and it's picture perfect. I must say the Telrad finder has to be one of the best bits of gear I have, used along with the original finder it has made dobing a lot of fun. It was a great night and it was good to see some familiar objects in a different light no pun intended.
I remember M104 was one of the first objects I saw with my old 8"newtonian, the excitment of getting a galaxy on first light was a big rush {my family thought I was 
when they looked}.
I always check it out chen its up. Looks great thru a 300mm Dob 
