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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RandyDSok" data-source="post: 175459" data-attributes="member: 201">You say that in jest and yet... beyond the shower there will be a lot of things to view and chat about during a star party on that night. So break out your caffeinated ( or alcoholic if you don't mind missing stuff after you doze off ) drink of choice, make up some snacks and get ready for a long night with a lot of things to check out. There are really a lot of great things to gander at all through the night this time of year. It's almost too hard to know where to start. Just some of the many highlights starting early on, with what has to be my favorite globular cluster... M13 the Hercules Cluster shows nicely in a 6" telescope and is just breath taking looking much like a bunch of tiny diamonds spread on top of sea of black. Actually another nice one that is a little further to the west is the M3 cluster as well. Just towards the north from the Hercules Cluster is another favorite of mine called the Ring Nebula M57 which is a little tricky to find in Lyra since it's a bit dim at magnitude 8.8 but a pretty cool looking "smoke ring". Going to the south over by the Milky Way, there are literally a ton of nebulae and clusters. Two of my favorites are the Trifid and Lagoon Nebula which also show up nicely. To change things up, a little to the east of the Milky Way first you'll find Saturn, always a joy to see in just about any size scope and in a 6" the rings start resolving nicely. A little further east ( just a little bit ) is Jupiter with it's moons that can even be resolved in a nice set of binoculars. Neptune is a little further south and towards the east but at 7.7 magnitude, may be tough to resolve on any scope less than a 6".  Shifting to the NE part of the sky, the Andromeda Galaxy is always a good sight to catch even with smaller scopes since it's actually larger than the size of the Moon. Of course only it's brighter inner core will show on smaller scopes with the outer edges still being dim in larger 16" scopes. On the opposite side of Mirach ( one of the brighter stars in the Andromeda constellation which the Andromeda Galaxy is near ) is the Triangulum Galaxy. Now move to the NW part of the sky up by the Big Dipper... just towards the horizon from the end star of the dippers handle you can find the Whirlpool Galaxy which at 8.1 magnitude is a challenge in a 6" scope that is well worth the effort to find. While at the Dipper, check out the second star in from the end of the handle and you'll see it's actually a binary star, always cool to see. As morning starts getting close... in the east, the Pleiades Cluster comes up ( as seen in Rob's picture above ) followed a little later by Orion  and the Orion Nebula both of which are great even in binoculars.</blockquote>

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