A very bright globular cluster with a very high number of separated star members. It's core brightens up very quickly. An interesting feature is a small bright stripe, built up by stars that cannot be separated with the eye. The background is grainy even far away from the core, and it is obvious that many of the bright field stars belong to the cluster gravitationally.

A large, bright globular cluster in the Ophiuchus, only 3 degrees away from M12, therefore on an ideal night, this two together may be an interesting object for binocular-owners. Splits fine to its stars, which look quite the same, with matching brightness and spectra, with a bit brighter membere here and there. Because of this homogeneousity, it reminds me on M13, although it's smaller and fainter. Towards East I've noticed two brighter arms leaving the core area, resembling the tongue of a snake.

M10 and M12 of the constellation Ophiuchus are a pair of globulars nearly identical by size and luminosity. The latter is the brigher and less homogeneous: a globular that splits greatly, consisting many exceedingly bright members, which make it look more interesting than M10. It looks a little bit oval, elongated in the E-W directions. Its visible size is smaller than that of the M10, but both of them are easy targets, that can be noticed even in the 8x50 finderscope.

The famous globular cluster of the Hercules constellation, perhaps the most represented globular in the press by far. A very easy object for any type and size of telescope, with a large diameter and high surface brightness. Even its position is easy, and especially nowadays it's again greatly visible on the late evening sky (on the Northern hemisphere at least). Splits fine even with small scopes, but reveals its real face with larger aperture: a globular full of separated, lone, bright stars. Behaves well on high magnification, I've increased powers upto 250x, and it kept revealing more and more of its members. For the first look, I've noticed that it looks a bit like a huge turtle, swimming from West to East, with the globular as its shell, and four star-paths as its legs.

A huge planetary nebula in the constellation Vulpecula. The UHC filter enhances the contrasts somewhat, but it is a wonderful sight even without it. The shiny central part resembles the core of an apple to me and has a direction of N-S. Its far from being homogeneous: in its Southern half a brighter area can be observed. On the Western and Eastern sides of this core are two fainter areas that complement it to a whole "apple". The Western one of these looks much brighter.

These two star clusters can be found easily nearby the constellation Cassiopeia. The Messier object M52 is a quite large open cluster with clearly identifiable boundaries and has a diameter of at least 20'. Its image is determined by a very bright star, however the cluster itself looks quite rich, even though the brightness of other stars is not even close to their brightest companion. To the east from M52, behind a wall of shiny stars lies the open cluster OCL261 (also known as Czernik 43), populated with a dozen dim stars.

This sketch of the beauty of the Orion was born in poor conditions as at the time of the process an almost full moon was rising, that painted the background lightgray. The UHC filter helped a little to enhance the sight.

Shiny, large size open cluster with four brighter stars in the middle of it. It's not too dense, therefore it may not be easily detectable in the finderscope. For me the real essence of it are the high number of double stars, however not all of these are real binaries in real.

This rarely mentioned Messier object looks like a diffuse, large spot even through the finderscope. On a low/moderate magnification a view of solid, dense open cluster appears in front of our eyes. A very nice member of the cluster can be found around 9' north from the middle of the cluster: a red giant of a color-index of 1.7, catalogued as HD 52938. With its 7.82 magnitude luminosity its also the brightest star of the cluster. Interestingly, because of its shiny red colour, I wouldn't think that this star is nearly 2 magnitudes brighter than the other stars in the centre of the cluster, which look like they're the brightest by far.

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 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).

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.