After telling a friend that I wouldn't be going out soon, I found an abandoned pile of fire wood and had a sudden urge for a campfire in the desert. As an afterthought I brought my binoculars along just in case. My apologies to Tho Dinh. I was wrong about the mud, there was none, but I was right about the cirrus clouds, it was a marginal night at best. DT Time: 2007 March 13 0300-0900 UT monday night tuesday morning Location:113W 41N West desert site in Puddle Valley. Variable cirrus clouding made most bright stars have a disk of nebulosity. Light wind shifted from direction all around the compass. Best transparency was straight up in a 30 degree arc. Later the clouds thickened to almost total. temp in the 30's F. New 20x80's to refresh my Messier finding. No charts. Brought a lawn chair but mostly stood or leaned against the SUV. A bright cheery campfire for warmups and for when it got cloudy. saturn's rings easily visable. m42 spread wings effect some fine structure m43 barely visable m78 easy double structure. m79 took several tries until I remembed the starhop through the center of Lepus. m41 wide and pleasant view m39 easy off the tail of the big dog. m46 m47 over the back of the big dog, one fully resolved bright stars, the other a thinner clummpy haze. m50 off the head of the big dog, and easy find just sweeping around. m48 took awhile until I remembered that it's half way from Sirius and Alphard which was a nice red color. m44 and m67 between Regulus and Gemini. m45 grand even with the cirrus haze masking and nebulosity from the cluster. m103 a dim clump near the gamma Cassiopea. m35 at the feet of Gemmini. m36 m37 m38 in a row sticking out of Auriga. m34 nice and wide off the foo of Pereus. m31 m32 m110 filled the field of view. much easier than the remembered view in 10x50's, no dust lanes visable. m33 supprised to find it a wide fuzzy direct vision patch. m52 between Cas and Cep with a bright embedded star. m81 m82 needed to wait for dark adaptation to bright these into view. m51 very easy both pieces, and a hint of spiral structure. m101 needed averted vision only got the central bright region. m109 suspected with averted vision and later confirmed it's location from charts at home. m3 big bright between Arcturus and Cor Caroli, with two bright companion stars. m65 m66 ngc3628 bright one came in first, waited and the second one showed up a minute later, and finally the dim one after staring for about 2 minutes. Also looked for but did not see: m104 suspected but can't confirm location, could just be a string of stars. m95, m96, m105 didn't have a good fix on the location and the sky started to cloud up m97, m108 chased them back and forth across the bottom of the big dipper's bowl but not seen. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss an email again! Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/