Bino Doubles

I cheated a bit and used my ETX-70 instead of binoculars but had fun anyway. I intended to seek out bino doubles in Camelopardalus but it had already sunk below my limited horizon (it was behind the house) and so I had to settle for UMa and UMi instead. I was able to snag 4 of the 5 in UMa, all except Wnc aka M40, and the only one in UMi. I had the devil of a time trying to get the ETX to track right for some reason or other. I finally got it to align ok using a one star alignment on Mizar/Alcor and figured out how to set RA/Dec (again). S 598 was nearly overhead and hard to focus but I was just barely able to split with the 27mm ep. 65 UMa was the first and it split right away with 27mm. Limiting magnitude was about 8 with the ETX, probably 3 or 4 unaided. It was a nice night, cool, humidity about 10%, no wind, clear. Lots of light polution as usual in our backyard observatory. Zeta UMa was nice as usual. Struve1831 showed up nicely in a nearly dark field. Pil in UMi was in a nice little 4 star asterism that kind of looked like a dish antenna pointed at a 4th star. At first I thought the 4th was the double but closer examination with a 10mm ep revealed the double as the top star of the 3 star 'dish' (SAO 2556). It was hard to split even with averted vision. 30" seems to be about as good as the ETX will do.

Seriously Ceres

First clear night after a wet week in the LRGV so I decided to see what I could see. Ceres has been hanging out in Leo so I took a look. First problem: it wasn't in the list of asteroids in CdC. I used ephemeris elements from the skychart user's group and added it to the data file. Bingo, right on target. I found it by slewing to one of the stars in Leo that was in the catalog. Next I held 'mode' down for a few seconds to put the controller in RA/DEC display mode and just slewed manually until I got it to the position shown in CdC. There it was, right in the center of the FOV. The star field matched CdC to a 'T'. 40 Lmi was the brightest star in the field, with a small triangular grouping of three 8th magnitude stars just below Ceres. Three other 7th magnitude stars were 'above', 'below', and to the right of Ceres near the edge of my 27mm EP. Ceres seemed to be about 7th mag. NGC3344 was in the FOV but way too dim for my ETX-70. I was just able to make out M81 in UMa later on.
It was warm and a bit muggy at 61. Ceres was high in the east near zenith and unfortunately I set my scope up where a street light shone right into my eyes. Not a very good position!