A Gaggle of Galaxies, M33, M110, M31, and M32

At last! A clear, moonless night in midMO. It has been nothing but moonlit, cloudy, or moonlit and cloudy nights, it seems forever. Tonight, however, after we got home from our usual Wednesday night square dance in Ozark MO, the clouds parted and we had a perfectly clear, dark sky night. M31, our neighbor the Andromeda Galaxy was easily visible to my naked eye. The Pleades were also starting to peek up over the trees; fall is in the air. I've seen M31 before and it always seems like it should be brighter in the telescope. Tonight I recognized its companions M110 and M32. CdC shows these on top of M31 which confused me earlier. They are close but distinct blobs in their own right in my 8" dob. M33 the Triangulum Galaxy was dim but easy to see in binoculars. It's HUGE. It's quite a sight in the 8" with 25mm ep. I finished off with a quick peek at Jupiter to see how its moons were doing. I saw all four but three were on top of Jupiter, very close. Almost an hour later, Io was closer but two others (Europa and Ganymede) had moved away from Jupiter a bit. Callisto was far away, opposite the Europa/Ganymede pair. The two cloud bands on Jupiter were nice tonight.

Two more in Cassiopea

The moon was almost full last night but it was otherwise clear so I decided to try for the two Messiers in Cassiopea, M52 and M103. Both were fairly easy to find even though I was just barely able to make out the five brightest stars in Cas unaided. M52 was off the end of the southern-most end of Cas, the acute angle end of the W or the upper end at the time I looked. It was about the same distance as the length of the leg of the W. M52 looked like it's picture except much dimmer in my 8" with 27mm ep and an almost full moon. It was so bright out that I didn't need any additional light to set up or take down. While I was getting dark adapted, Mr Coon decided to come see what was going on. Before he could climb into my lap, I asked him what he was doing on my deck and he waddled off into the moonlight. We're building a pergola on the deck and all of his usual dinner food (cracked corn) was missing. He had to raid the compost pile last night. M103 was next and it was a bit harder to find than 52 but not much. There is a group of brighter stars in the middle of the cluster that sort of looks like a minature version of Orion and 103 is very near Del Cas, the northern most bottom 'point' of the W on the obtuse angle end. It also looks a lot like its picture.
All in all it was a fine night even with the moonlight and a quick and dirty look at two northern Messiers. It'll be good to revisit these in a darker sky.