I made it to the star party last night. The sky was very clear, but a little bit (or maybe a lot) humid. There were lots of people out with scopes, and I was actually able to help some people find some things. As usual, Jupiter was very popular. Though I did not spend much time on it.
Starting with Polaris, which we could split, but it was pretty hazy. Then pretty much before I knew it, everything was there. The northern sky was mostly lit up with the lights of the city, which lies in that direction. But to the west, east and south it was dark enough. It made me realize that I have been watching the sky over my house and I do not have a very good western view. So that part of the sky is still quite foreign to me.
The new object for the night was M34 in Perseus. A nice open cluster. I was also able to find the wonderful double cluster, also Perseus. Later Orion gave nice views of the nebula. Pliedes and Hyades (though for some reason, I couldn’t get anyone interested in Hyades.) I asked about M1, but only got confirmation that it is too faint. Several of us looked for M76, but never got anything. I was pleased with M34. Once again the telrad worked really nice. I used it to find pretty quickly Andromeda Galaxy, though it was pretty hazy in that part of the sky.
Anyway, I will come back and finish the list, I don’t have my notes with me right now. It was one of my best star parties.