20x80 Binocular Session

Date: 9 March 2007 U.T.
Time: 5:37 - 6:45 U.T.
Binoculars: 20x80 (hand held)
Seeing: Good
NELM: 6.0 - 6.5
Temperature: +28 F (-2 C)

High Humidity and Clouds: A small amount of rain fell during the day prior to this session. The floor of my open-air observatory remained damp. Clouds didn't dissipate until sometime after sunset. Due to these conditions I decided to not set up a telescope. By the time of the observation a fairly thick layer of frost had formed on the porch, etc.

At the start of the binocular session my sky was clear in the west. The rest of the sky seemed to be covered with very thin clouds. Later, conditions improved enough to allow me to see most of the objects that I wanted to observe.

M41 is an open star cluster in Canis Major. Someone had recently mentioned on the newsgroup, sci.astro.amateur that they were disappointed in the appearance of this cluster in their 130mm telescope. I made a response as to some possible reasons, and mentioned that M41 was visible to the unaided eye under a sufficiently dark sky. So, with a clear sky, I decided to pay a visit to M41.

Sure enough, the cluster was a relatively easy object to detect with the unaided eye. Through the binoculars M41 was resolved into numerous individual stars. I found the view to be 'rather nice' despite the cluster's low altitude in my southwestern sky.

Galaxies in Leo, Virgo and Coma Berenices: Next on my agenda were the Messier galaxies in the Virgo region. The above sketch has north up and west to the right. It shows the general appearance of M65 (the galaxy to the right of center), M66 (the galaxy to the left of center), and NGC 3620 (the fainter galaxy north of the other two). Galaxies tend to look like faint,fuzzy stains against the background sky when observed with 20x80 binoculars.

In addition to the three objects mentioned above, I observed the following galaxies: M58, M59, M60, M64, M84, M85, M86, M87, M88, M89, M90, M91, M95, M96, M98, M99, M100, and M105.

Near the end of the session the Moon rose. The high humidity scattered the moonlight, making the sky much brighter than it would have otherwise been.