So here I was reading Jay's account of finding Einstein's Cross, 8 e9 l-y's out and somewhere down from 14th mag, then Matthew's tour of NGC objects, and it occurs to me I can wait several years to post on this list, or figure there's a continuum of expertise to be shared.

It was this summer that I got a tripod for the binocs and started looking intensively. We all got excited at finding the Jovian moons; a coupla weeks ago I finally got all four figured out.

A big watershed was spotting a lovely cluster I didn't know the name for and finding it in the atlas: was the alpha Persei association, always to be mine. Just two nights I started exploring Auriga and got a fix on M36 and M38, with the 7x50's.

Aperture fever's setting in, as you can intuit.

Meanwhile, the opposite thrill is beginning to catch on, finding objects in the charts first, that I didn't know naked-eye, then catching them in situ. First was the Double Cluster, great place to start. Twice I've caught M34 from the backyard, just barely.

You can see a pattern in these sightings. There's one real dark spot in our yard. A coupla miles out of town, there's a good spot on a back road thru the fields, where the Double Cluster first hove into view. Y'all will be seeing a lot of me on the Peak as time goes by, gettin sucked in, moving first over toward Pegasus and Cepheus.