Last weekend my brother-in-law Art and I got the scope out (the NP-101) and had a fine night of observing in Lake Riverside. Scope setup went easily. We did two cycles of alignment with Polaris and Deneb.

The first target we went to was the Ring Nebula (M57). At first, I thought the scope was totally off, as I didn’t see the nebula at all (using the 22mm Nagler). The I realized the difference between the C-11 and the NP-101 makes the nebula very small. It was almost at the center of the field of view.

The next target was M27, the Dumbbell Nebula. The dumbbell shape was clearly visible. We tried the NGC 6888, the Crescent Nebula, but it was not visible. Albireo, what I call the “Bruin Star” due to its blue and yellow color was very nice. We could see the full whirlpool shape of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy.

Then we headed south. The Lagoon was quite pretty, lots of detail in the nebula. We had shifted all of our observing to the 13mm Ethos eyepiece. It is an amazing piece of glass. We viewed globular clusters M4 and the tiny M80. Jupiter was a decent site, but M22 was a stunning globular cluster. The benefits of the Ethos really shined on this one.

We moved to M17, the Horseshoe Nebula and then looked at the Lagoon and Trifid nebulae in one view with the 44mm Panoptic. The next stop was a globular cluster tour.

We started in Ophiuchus:

• M9 — A nice tight ball of stars
• M10 — Best with the 9mm Nagler, as Art said, “The more you look, the more stars you see.”
• M12
• M14
• M19 — Down in the soup to the southwest, but we saw it.
• M62 — In the soup and very small.
• M107 — Barely there, but it was there.
• M15 — A very tight and small ball of stars.

We felt it was time for more planets. We saw Neptune as a tiny blue ball, clearly showing a disk where nearby stars did not. Uranus was similarly good to see. Then another globular, M72 in Aquarius.

On to more nebula. We looked at NGC 7009, the Saturn nebula. We could barely see the round shape. Definitely a target for the C-11. We could almost see the structure of the Helix Nebula, NGC 7293. And then came the best of the night, and it was a cluster.

The Double Cluster in Perseus has risen, and it was a great view. With the Ethos, the stars just stood out in the middle of the cluster. The view was amazing, almost 3-D. While the whole thing is visible with the 44mm Panoptic, the Ethos view was over the top beautiful. This was the most remarkable object we saw that night.

We took a quick view of M76, the Little Dumbell. Then the Moon was rising. We were able to see it moving behind the trees of Thomas Mountain to the northeast. Stunning. It would be great to get a movie of that one day.

This kind of night reminds me why I must keep observing visually. Pretty pictures are nice, but seeing objects in the sky is an experience I won’t forget.