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.

The second largest open cluster of the constellation Cancer, right after the M44, which can also be seen with naked-eyes even under suburban skies. On a power of 71x, it fills the neary half degree field of vision. It was easily found: even the 8x50 finderscope displays it as a shiny little blur. The M67 is a nice, dense open cluster, with a members of high variety of brightness: there are about a dozen dominant stars of the 12th magnitude, but in the backround you can easily detect stars of 13-14m. The entire population visible to me were at least 100 stars, however the background looks really diffuse, so I assume there must be plenty of even dimmer stars in this cluster.

A rather small cluster, but still with many bright members in the constellation Orion. You can find it easily, tho a medium magnification will be neccessary to reveal fully its figure, that is made up of two separate parts. At the end of one of these patterns sitting a very close binary star, both stars with high magnitudes yet can be separated easily, even with a power of around 100x. This cluster is ofter referred as "The 37 cluster", as its stars form a large cosmic 37. :)

You can find this sparsely populated, large open cluster near the star ß Mon in Monoceros. In its center shines the star HR 2344 (HD 45546), which is a mag 5 star - therefore it is visible with the naked eye even from moderately dark places. The cluster has many members brighter than 10m, so it looks nice even through an ordinary finderscope, and because of its size and sparse density you shouldn't go for powers higher than 50-75x when looking at it.

This object is also identified as the "UFO galaxy", and resides on the boundary of the constellations Lynx and Cancer. There are no bright stars nearby, which makes finding it a little bit harder, although it has quite a high surface brightness of 9.8 magnitude. The edge-on galaxy of W-E direction has a clearly visible core that seems asymmetric: looks as if it's getting wider Eastward.

This spiral galaxy is one of the brightest galaxies in Cancer, with a luminosity of 11.8-13m according to catalogues, however to me it looks much brighter than this, with an especially easily noticeable bright galactic core. The almond-shaped star city is small, yet an easy target thanks to the three nearby bright stars.

This open cluster can be located easily, yet it doesn't cover a large area. It has half-dozen brighter and at least 20 fainter members. Its most notable pattern is the diamond made up by four bright stars in the middle of the cluster. The OC is clearly separated from its environs.

Also known as the Eskimo or Clown face nebula, this planetary is the real gem of the constellation Gemini. It's a very bright object, showing much details and is quite unresponsive on filters. I estimate the brightness of its tiny, star-like core about 11 magnitudes, with two perfectly regular concentric circles around it, each with surface brightnesses about 1 magnitudes fainter than this. The diametre of the inner circle seems exactly the half of the entire object.

At 71x it has a diametre of about 1/8th of that of the whole FoV, this means it's a quite small open cluster, clearly emerges from its environment. It contains two really bright stars (possible foreground stars) and at least two dozens of faint ones.

The UFO galaxy, take two. I've already sketched this galaxy back in March 30, 2008 (see here), but because of an unfortunate administrational mistake, I've give it another go tonight. :) The UFO shape can hardly be noticed - if this galaxy resembles a UFO, then we could call all edge-on galaxies UFO's. However, the object is very nice, large and very bright, and the star rich environment makes the view even nicer. Its core brightens up slowly, a starlike core can be barely recognized. It looks as if there was a faint arm to the north of the core. Another interesting point is that although the stars are about at the same spot on the two sketches, the West direction indicator is at really different positions. I should check this out later.

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).

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.

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.