Over the Memorial Day weekend, 1998, I drove to Fremont Peak three times but only got one night of observing. So out of sheer spite, after I arrived home from the final foggy session, I hauled out Refractor Red, my day-glow red and gloss black Vixen 55 mm fluorite, and logged another twenty-seven Messier objects from my yard in Palo Alto, California. I observed at 37x, using a Brandon 12 mm eyepiece.

It was my first decent look at the summer Milky way this year. I started by ticking off several globular clusters unremarkably -- M9, M19, M62, M70, M69, and M54. The latter was noticeably more concentrated than the others. M22 showed signs of granularity -- incipient resolution -- but nearby M28 did not.

I was worried about M55, but there it was, down in the light wall of Silicon Valley to the south. All I could see was the center of the cluster, elongated somewhat north/south, like a ghost in the sky glow.

M6 and M7 were both easily resolved. M8 showed plenty of stars and much nebulosity. The Trifid Nebula, M20, was faint, but detectable. M21 was resolved, as were M23, M24 (just the Sagittarius Star Cloud -- I do not log the "gathering spot"), M25, and M18. M17 showed the "Swan" shape. M16 showed stars and nebulosity.

M11 was resolved, with one especially prominent star. M26 was resolved, as were M29 and M39, but M56 and M71 showed no trace of resolution. M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, showed the two-lobed structure that gives the name -- the more nearly round contours of the fainter part of the nebula were invisible against the background illumination.

I rounded out the night with a nice view of Albireo, a lovely color contrast in blue and yellow.

My 55 mm Messier survey now stands at 93 down, 16 to go, all observed from my yard in suburban Palo Alto, California. Fog, nyah!! And the same to sky glow...