After a somewhat long hiatus, I finally had a chance to get to a dark site again last night and was easily able to view the "odd couple" pairings of the open cluster M34 and Comet 17P/Holmes and the spiral galaxy M33 and Comet 8P/Tuttle respectively through a Celestron Ultima 10x50 binocular. Both periodic comets were impressive as seen through an 18" Obsession Dob and a 41mm Panoptic (Holmes) and 13mm Ethos (Tuttle).

My friends and I observed numerous celestial objects from the end of astronomical twilight until about half an hour after moonrise. For a night that was somewhat questionable weatherwise, conditions were quite good for most of the session. (I even logged a couple of faint IC planetary nebulae that were new to me.) In fact, to our surprise we were able to see B33 (the Horsehead Nebula) through the 18" Obsession and a 17.5" TeleKit Dob using H-beta filters.

Comet Tuttle passes quite close to M33 tonight and some impressive images have been posted at http://www.spaceweather.com and other astronomy sites.

Dave Mitsky

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I managed to see both Tuttle and M33 in same fov last night.(dec 30th) 10" Lightbridge with the 2" 26mm. Really chuffed as I'd never seen either object before and I was suffering badly from light pollution Holmes still visible with m34 just outside fov.

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Lucky you. It was cloudy here, which stunk, as the ISS was supposed to be visible.

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