Observing Report - FINALLY found a minor planet! Vesta!

I replaced the batteries in my Telrad, found my missing Astronomy accessories, and was ready to rock and roll. Also found my "Wide Field Kit", which simply consists of a 40mm PL and a 6.3 reducer. Tonight was a decent night as far as transparency goes, however Jupiter set before my scope could cool down, or seeing was that bad, don't know, it didn't effect my other observations.

Grabed my red flashlight, SkyChart 2000, and drew up a list of targets.

M76 - Very easy to find, but no individual stars
M57 - Looked like a diffuse star, not much on detail, since using my Wide Field kit.
M15 - Very bright central region. Could discern some outer structure, kind of like spiral arms, using 18mm SWA
M103 - Nice Open cluster, whole area in Cassiopeia is cool to scan with low power.
M24 - Also a nice OC
NGC 6830 and 6823 - Double Cluster - My favorite. Always a treat. This is why I bought the 6.3 reducer and 40mm in the first place. Nicely framed.
Uranus - Found and confirmed with the help of my new observing companion, Stellarium v10. With its bigger database, and ability to flip views to match eyepiece, I confirmed this object for the 3rd time in my lifetime. Bumping to 18mm certainly also confirms it sphere like appearance over a star. NICE
Vesta !!!!! - A first for me tonight! Again, using Stellarium v10 I was able to confirm my reference stars to my field of view. Found it relatively quickly. Bright, but still kind of starlike. Need to due further research on if the object moves faster than the backround stars or not, would be cool to see it move to other stars.

So I didn't get to visit my friend Jupiter much tonight, but finding Uranus was cake, and finding asteroid Vista for the first time ever was certainly the icing!

Stellarium v10 Beta is Betta

I'm a big fan of Stellarium, which is on Open Source program that has one of the most realistic views of the night sky that I have seen. It's previous versions had one "flaw", it's very limited database of objects. It was great at rendering the constellations, but it lacked the ability to list Messier or NGC objects. Well, that seems to be mostly resolved in the latest version. Besides adding what I can tell is the complete Messier list, it also appears to have a healthy database of NGC objects as well. It also has a revamped user interface. Its a tad slower then the previous version, as far as calling up the option that is, but the new user interface is intuitive enough. On my Vista machine it install without incident, although it did not keep any of my previous information saved, such as location or defaults. So if you have added your own objects to the previous version, or lots of locations, be aware you may loose those. They have a user forum however that may help you out, so I advise doing your research first before installing it if you wish to have any chance at keeping those custom items.

So grab the latest Stellarium beta, they have a great product, and I'm looking forward to the next release.

http://www.stellarium.org/