Bruce tempted me to go with him and a buddy to SAV, but I was too tired -- and too suspicious of the sky gods -- to make that committment of time and car-sickness. I went to DV instead.
I arrived at 7:30pm with my Cave 8". This was going to be first light under relatively dark skies for this scope. I've also acquired several new toys since my last dark sky observing session (consolation for the lack of clear skies), including a 22mm Panoptic. But when I arrived, I noticed an ominous, long, dark cloud bank to the west, hanging over the bay area. It held down the light pollution, but it also threatened to move eastward and swallow me up. It was cold and little breeze was flipping the pages of my Sky Atlas 2000.0 and chilling my fingers.
I used a magnitude chart of Ursa Minor that Richard gave me to try to estimate my limiting magnitude. The results were strangely inconsistent. I couldn't see the mag 6.3 stars just north of the bowl, but I easily saw the mag 6.2 star up near Polaris. When I got home, I checked this star with the map of the same area in _The Backyard Astronomer's Guide_, and they list it as 5.9. I guess that explains it. So my limiting mag was about 6.0.
I began with M42, just because I like it so much. It was stunning at 65x in the 22mm Panoptic. And the seeing was quite good as well. I then went to a pair of galaxies that Mark Wagner first showed me early one morning at the peak last fall -- M81 and M82. They were spectacular. Thanks, Mark. Then I went to the Owl Nebula, which I had never seen before. It was distinct and hinted at features, but I couldn't detect any structure, even with higher power and a DS filter.
By now, some low, puffy clouds were moving in from the west and UMaj was obscured, so I reversed direction and observed the open clusters M46 and M47, and the planetary 2438 superimposed over M46. This is a grand sight. Then on to the Rosette Nebula -- it's size and complexity is overwhelming. My field of view was really too limited to see it well (unfortunately, this scope only has a 1.25" focuser -- we'll remedy that soon).
The clouds swallowed up the southern portion of the sky, so I looked to the southeast, where Leo was lunging upward. Galaxy territory! But it was a tricky business, due to the spotty clouds moving around. I managed to find M65, M66 and 3628 quickly, but the view dissolved before my eyes as the clouds rubbed out Leo from the sky.
I took a break to sit in the car, warm up and have some grub before trying again. When I went back out, things were actually clearing up! The long dark cloud bank continued to hold down the light pollution to the west, but my skies were actually improving. YEAH!
UMaj was well up by now (about 10:30pm), so I took advantage of the moment to visit M51 and M101. M101 revealed no detail -- I guess the skies just weren't dark enough. But M51 was beautiful and revealed spiral arms.
I spent the next couple of hours working on the galaxies in Leo that lie between Regulus and Beta, and between +10N and +20N. I managed to find nearly half of those shown in Tirion with just a few exceptions. My total count for that area was 20 galaxies! Some were tiny and bright, some were large and dim, and some were tiny and dim. Most showed no detail beyond a general shape, but a few revealed features such as a dust lane. Some were so close together that they looked like fried eggs.
The 22mm Panoptic proved to be an outstanding eyepiece for galaxy hunting. I often increased my magnification to 110x with a TV 13mm Plossl. This often brought out the galaxy better, but it was difficult getting used to the narrower fov.
I wound up the evening by scoping out the Sombrero Galaxy -- WOW! That's a new one for me but I'll be sure to revisit it often.
It was now approaching midnight, my atlas and books were dripping wet,
and my fingers were nearly frozen!