Venus and Jupiter were just past conjunction so I headed out to the West side of the village with a view to trying to catch them just before sunset. By the time I got set up the Sun had set and the Belt of Venus was visible. Hardly any cloud in the sky although a reasonable covering on the Western horizon.

Spent a short while scanning the horizon with the naked eye but couldn't see either of the planets.

Spent a short while trying to find them with 10x50 binocular. Still couldn't see anything. With the binocular it was very obvious that there was quite a bit of cloud all along the part of the horizon I wanted to be watching.

Having failed to see them (defeated by cloud on the horizon) I headed back to the house. I double checked everything with Starry Night to be sure that I'd been looking in the right place at the right time — I had. Venus would have set at around 19:37 UT so both planets would have been very close to the horizon while I was looking so they were obviously obscured by the cloud.

Now that darkness had really set in I set up the 130M in the garden and decided to check everything by having a quick look at M57.

Sky appeared slightly misty and dew was forming on everything very quickly. Quite a damp feel to the air.

Initially I found it very hard to find it. The problem seemed to be that the red-dot finder was way off and, even after taking some time to adjust it I was still having problems. It seems that, for some reason, the finder itself is now sat on the 'scope such that I don't have enough "slack" in the adjustment to get the 'scope and the dot lined up. I suspect I'm going to have to try and adjust how the finder sits on the 'scope so that the fine-tuning can be done with enough "slack" in the system.

Finally found M57 after a little effort and made a point of making a mental note of how far off the dot in the finder it was so finding other objects should be a little easier.

Decided to hunt down M56 with the 130M. Started out with 25mm eyepiece. Found it with some trouble. It appeared to be a very small, faint, fuzzy patch. Switched to the 15mm eyepiece and it still appeared to be rather faint. Quite indistinct, no real hint of any actual shape to speak of. Couldn't resolve any stars at all.

Switched to 10mm eyepiece. Although appearing bigger it was still faint, fuzzy and indistinct. There was, however, a hint of a shape now. My best description would be that it seemed vaguely triangular.

With the 6mm eyepiece it was bigger still and the description of it with the 10mm seemed to hold true for the view with the 6mm. As globulars go M56 has to be the hardest target I've looked for yet. With some extra effort and generally with averted vision there did seem to be a slight grainy appearance to it giving a hint that I was looking at something that was composed of stars. That view came and went and was very fleeting.

Decided to go for M27 next. Roughly lined up the 'scope on the right area and turned my back on the sky for a few moments to check a couple of charts. When I turned back the part of the sky I wanted to look at was now apparently obscured by a cloud. There was no warning of the cloud, I didn't see it coming in from any part of the sky, it just seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Then, almost as quickly as it had appeared, it disappeared. It wasn't that it moved away, it seemed to just disappear (again, while my back was turned). Also, at the same time, I noticed that the NW part of the sky had brightened compared to a little earlier (although, in this case, it didn't seem to be cloud as I could still see stars).

Most odd.

While looking in that direction saw a rather bright meteor head roughly East to West just North of Cygnus.

Back to hunting for M27. Took a little effort to locate — partly down to the issue with the finder and also partly down to the fact that I was looking for a small, faint fuzzy object so I was doing a very careful sweep of the general area. When it finally appeared in the field of view (initially using 25mm eyepiece) I was shocked and amazed at how large and bright it appeared!

The initial appearance was of a large, grey/blue misty patch with a very definite "dumbbell" appearance. Although the overall effect was that it was roughly circular I could see that two opposing sides of the nebula were much brighter and more obvious then the rest of the circumference.

A stunning sight!

Switched to the 15mm eyepiece. The view was even better. Slightly brighter and the "dumbbell" appearance was more pronounced. Made the following rough sketch:

Finally, a reasonable night out with the 'scope and Mars is getting into a position where I stand a chance of seeing it. That said, I was still observing with a sky that was getting more and more misty while looking in the general direction of a bright streetlight, through a fair bit of atmosphere and with eyepieces that were starting to fog up.

Started with the 25mm eyepiece. All I could see was a non-pin-point bright object that had a hint of orange colouring to it. Next switched to the 10mm eyepiece. Now it started to look like a planet. It had an obvious gibbous phase to it and in brief moments of steady seeing (the image was swimming around rather badly) I thought I could detect a variation in the shading of the surface.

Added a #21 Orange filter to the 10mm eyepiece. Was impressed with how well it seemed to clear up the image. With the filter, in the moments if steady seeing, the variation in the colour of the surface was much more pronounced.

Next used the 6mm eyepiece with the #21 Orange filter. The "swimming" of the image was now much more pronounced so it was harder to get a handle on the image. However, on the odd occasion when the image did settle down the dark patch was very visible. It looked the same as with the 10mm eyepiece only more obvious.

By 23:25 the dew problem was starting to get pretty bad and more and more mist was forming at low level. Decided to call an end to the session.

Sunspot 798 stood out the moment I got the Sun projected in the Solarscope. Quite close to the limb. It appeared to be made up of one large spot with at least five smaller spots around it.

Had a couple of goes at imaging what I was seeing with the camera in my mobile phone (sadly the only instant imaging device I've got to hand at the moment) but failed miserably.

Instead, decided to try and draw a sketch of what I was seeing:

Using a pair of eclipse shades I noticed that sunspot 798 was just about visible to the naked eye. If I'd not known where to look I probably would have missed it due to it being so close to the limb.

While having another look with the Solarscope I noticed that not too far from 798 there was another very small spot visible. At first I thought it might simply have been some dust on the lens or the mirror. I rotated both of them to be sure and it didn't move.

Subsequently found out that the sunspot mentioned above now has a number: sunspot 809.

Also had another go at taking some images with the mobile phone. This time they didn't come out too bad. While there's no real detail to them you can at least get an impression of what 798 looks like in the Solarscope:

Sunspot 798 looked much bigger and more spread out than my last look at it. The main change in its appearance is no doubt down to the fact that it's now more face-on than it was when I last observed it.

Made the following sketch:

I also took the following image on the camera in my mobile phone to give an impression as to what my view looked like:

Also noticed that Sunspot 809 was no longer visible.

First looked for sunspot 798 with naked eye and eclipse shades. It was very easy to see as a rather large dark spot.

In the Solarscope it was obvious that the shape of the spot had changed a lot from yesterday. Although the following sketch gives the impression that it's smaller than yesterday it actually seemed to cover slightly more area than I remember from the previous observation.

Made the following sketch:

Mars was still quite low. There was also a hint of haze in the air which seemed to dim it slightly. After first locating the planet with the 25mm eyepiece I switched to the 10mm eyepiece. The image was quite washed out and was dancing around quite a bit. Initially about all I could make out was that there was a visible phase.

The breeze calmed down for a moment so I switched to the 10mm with 2x Barlow. As normal I struggled to get useful focus with the Barlow and also noticed that there was some significant false colour around the image of Mars.

Switched to the 6mm (with no Barlow) and the image was much crisper. Mars appeared very bright, even to the point that I was getting four very obvious spikes off it. In steady moments there was a hint of surface markings visible. As with a few nights ago, these appeared as vague differences in colour.

Added the #21 Orange filter to the 6mm eyepiece. This reduced the glare of the image, the surface looking less washed-out. The hint of markings seemed to improve although they didn't improve to the point that I'd have been able to draw a reliable sketch. They were there, visible but also somewhat indistinct. The fact that the image wasn't terribly steady most of the time adding to the problems.

Next gave the #80A Medium Blue filter a go with the 6mm eyepiece. I don't know why but I was initially surprised to see that this made Mars look white, not blue. The markings mentioned above were still visible and, this time, appeared as darker gray areas.

Decided to experiment a little more by combining the #21 and #80A filters. The image looked more or less the same as it does with the #21 filter on its own although I'd be tempted to say that the darker areas appeared a little easier to notice — although still somewhat indistinct.

Also tried the #56 Green filter with the 6mm eyepiece. Other than making Mars look somewhat green this didn't seem to make an awful lot of difference to the image.

Because it was close to Mars and is also an easy target I decided to have a quick look at M45 — The Pleiades. Had a look with the 25mm eyepiece. Quite a stunning sight through the 'scope. The main pattern of stars more or less filled the field of view.

By around 23:00 UT the breeze was picking up quite a bit and the sky was becoming more washed-out due to the Moon so decided to call an end to the session.

The only feature I could see on the Sun was sunspot 810. There didn't appear to be an awful lot to it — just a small, dark, mostly circular umbra with a lighter penumbra just about visible all around it. The penumbra appeared to be as thick as the umbra was wide.

I also noticed some faint mottling on the surface of the Sun close to sunspot 810.

Given that Mars wasn't going to be visible for at least another hour I decided to spend a little bit of time in the chair sweeping the area around Cassiopeia and Perseus with a 10x50 binocular.

At around 20:10 UT I stumbled upon the open cluster NGC 663 (also known as Caldwell 10). Looked like a fuzzy but slightly mottled ball. It appeared more obvious to the eye and had more of a hint of detail with averted vision.

Also had a good look at the Double Cluster (also known as Caldwell 14 or NGC 869 and NGC 884). It appeared much brighter and richer than the last time I looked.

At around 20:32 UT, after more sweeping around, I stumbled upon M34 in Perseus. It looked like a widespread group of faint stars. Some were easy to see with direct vision while more came into view with averted vision.

Took a look at M31 (NGC 224) in Andromeda. It was almost impossible to see with any clarity with direct vision but, with averted vision, appeared as a large misty galaxy shaped object. As much as I tried I couldn't identify M32 through the binocular.

Had a quick go at making a rough estimate of the size of M31 as it was visible in the binocular. I'd roughly estimate that it was between ¼ and ⅓ of the field of view.

Noticed some thin cloud either forming in or approaching from the West.

Noticed that Mars was now clear of the roofs of the houses to the East of me — not as hight as I'd like but getting that way. Decided to give it a little more time so that it would be higher, would be more clear of the street light that is in that general direction and the extra time would hopefully give the approaching cloud some time to clear.

By now the cloud was starting to cover Mars. Also noticed that the temperature had dropped a fair bit in the previous 10 minutes. Because Mars was still visible through the cloud I dropped the 25mm eyepiece into the 130M and had a look.

I was initially surprised at how big it appeared given that I was using the 25mm eyepiece. It looked much bigger than the first time I looked at it with the 25mm.

With the 6mm eyepiece the image was terrible — most probably due to the cloud (which was still thin enough to see Mars through it). The phase was obvious (and obviously bigger than previous observations) but there was no hint at all of any surface features. There was lots of false colour and the image was quite unsteady.

At around 21:14 UT Mars was lost from view to the naked eye and in the 'scope due to the cloud. Checking the Western horizon it seemed obvious that the cloud had no useful breaks and was here for some time to come. Called an end to the session at 21:17 UT.