I was very fortunate that we had a clear night when this rare event occured, we had only a couple of such evenings this winter sofar. The 50% Moon was on the Southern side of the Pleiades. The star you may notice near the Moon was visible only for about 5-10 minutes, before it was covered by our little brother.

I've sketched this planetary about a year ago, but obviously I did not mark it as "SKETCHED" in my list of objects, so the result is a new drawing. However, when I compared the two sketches, it was obvious to make this mistake, because now - even if conditions were not ideal thanks to the 50% Moon nearby - I was able to see and record much more details: the brighter arcs around the central star were not at all visible for me, but now they were easily noticeable. The UHC filter was not neccessary to observe this object, however it boosted the intensity of the brighter central bubble.

A small, triangle shaped open cluster sitting in a sparse stellar environment. A very bright star dominates the cluster at one of its corners, but I suspect that this star is not actually a part of this group. Apart this, the cluster shows about a dozen of brighter and another dozen of fainter members.

This large, moderately bright open cluster can be detected easily in a 50mm finderscope or binocular. When looking through the telescope I see countless number of stars that are very similar both in colour and luminosity. I can also detect some foggy background which may be miriads of unresolved stars. The conditions were not perfect to sketch this cluster because the 50% Moon caused a low NELM (SQM reading was 17.33 towards the Moon and 19.46 opposite the Moon, -3°C, low humidity).

Huge, bright open cluster in the middle of the Cancer constellation. It's so bright that it can be easily noticed with the naked eye on a sky that has a NELM of at least 4-4.5 magnitudes, as a faint fuzzy spot. It's actual diametre when viewed in a telescope is twice as large as that of the full Moon, therefore it's best viewed in a wide field telescope like a short rafractor, finderscope or binoculars. I've some sentimental feelings about this object, because it was the first deep space object I've ever observed with my own telescope (a 114/900 newt back in 2001). It has some dozens of relatively bright stars with white or a bit bluish colours, some of them forming spectacular triangles. The weather conditions were not favorable for sketching, I measured -11°C when I finished this session.

This is actually an unsuccessful observation, I still believe it should be posted here because it shows how hard is the life of an ordinary visual observer. :) The map I'm using (Triatlas B) shows stars and DSO's to approximately 12 mags. I found this quasar in Auriga and I was sure I'll be able to take a glimpse of this distant object. Without exact position data, I decided to sketch the field of stars and identify the actual quasar later. Unfortunately my astronomy program did not show any quasar here to the 16.5 magnitudes. The reason is that it lists the quasar at 18.2. I've googled the Vmag of this QSO, and found brightness data anywhere from 15.0 to 17.8m. At 15 magnitudes I should be able to see the object surely with averted vision (we had 100% snow coverage, so the NELM was not as good as it used to be). So, what I've learned from this is that brightness information must be handled with special care, especially for faint and exotic objects.

This galaxy shows an almond-shaped bright core and an ellipse-shaped body, with some brighter bulge around the core as its only special feature. The NELM was quickly getting worse because of the rising Moon, so I'm absolutely sure it would show a much larger size under a truely dark sky, but this time I estimate dimensions of only 2'x0.5'. SQM readings (just to give you an idea how much the Moon adds to light pollution): 19.95m/arcsec² (Moon slightly below the horizon) down to 19.58m/arcsec² (Moon slightly over the horizon) just within a 30 minute timeframe.

This is my first ever Moon-sketch, displaying craters Copernicus, Fauth and Gay-Lussac with some other sub-craters and domes not noted on the sketch. This is my actual sketch done at the eyepiece, no alterations were made after manually or digitally, other than resizing. It took about 45 minutes to finish, and I'm quite satisfied with it, althouth I've found that sketching the Moon is indeed very hard and very different from sketching deep space objects. Perhaps I should not finish Lunar sketches at the eyepiece but create only drafts with different markings for different shades and create the actual sketch in the warmth of the room. As an additional difficulty, the sky was 100% covered with a thin layer of cloud which made the image to be in constant change, only 1 or 2 stars was visible here and then. Moon phase was about 69%.

I was sketching the marvelous open cluster of NGC 1662 at 100x and just after I finished and took a final look, at 00:18 UT suddenly a fiery meteor rushed through the FoV, leaving a bluish ionized tail behind. This was visible for about 10 seconds before it disappeared forever. The series of sketches I've rendered digitally after quick drafts made at the eyepiece, using my actual NGC 1662 sketch as a background. As you can see, the tail was quickly moving to the North (thanks to the Dobsonian mount I was able to react and follow very quickly). While it constantly lost its brightness, it became wider and wider, and the most interesting phenomenon was the change of its shape: it got 'broken' at several points. Between each of these points, the tail remained straight. The joints were visibly brighter than the straight parts, just like on the sketch. I wonder if this is the regular behaviour of ionized tails of meteors, but this is what I saw. Anyhow, it was most probably the greatest 10 seconds of my observing life.

A very spectacular little open cluster in the great Orion constellation. It has only a handful of stars, but they are very different in colour, with brightness in the 9m range. The most interesting part is the paralelogram in the middle. SQM reading: 21.0 m/arcsec², 9°C.

This galaxy, also know as Mirach's ghost, not surprisingly is located near the bright star Mirach of the constellation Andromeda. Some have reported difficulties seeing this object, because although it's fairly bright, the glowing of the nearby Mirach easily outshines it. For me, it was visible easily from the start, but after I've increased the magnification to 250x, I was finally able to examine the structure of the galaxy without Mirach in the FoV. You may need eyepieces with good anti-glare coating to disturbing light rays. The galaxy itself is very small, round, with some suspectedly brighter details at its Northern corner, albeit this may be the result of an optical error only. SQM reading: 21.0 m/arcsec², 9°C.

Component A is the brightes part of of the trio by far. They split up easily even at 71x. A: 6.5m, white. B: 9.5m, slightly bluish. C: 11m. A-B: 10", PA: 20°. A-C: 16", PA: 170°. SQM reading: 18.33m/arcsec^2 (full moon!), 6°C.