Vesta again

Another clear night so I decided to try for Vesta again.  Last night it was too hazy and I had trouble spotting anything other than Jupiter and Aldeberan.  Tonight I could easily see Zet Tau so I grabbed my 7x50's and went to the observatory.  Oh, earlier today I swabbed out my observing space with a power washer.  It's all washed and swept clean now.  Anyway, I quickly spotted the pentagon of stars south of Zet Tau and began looking for Vesta.  It wasn't immediately apparent but with averted vision and occasional clearing of the haze I was able to spot it right where it should be, just south of a line joining 115 and 111 Tau.

Asteroid Vesta

Finally, at last a clear night!  We got home from Darryl's C2 dance tonight and there was a nice first quarter moon with a few clouds.  I stepped out back to 'the observatory' and there was Jupiter, high in the east with more clouds but it looked ok so I started setting up.  I've got my new crutch tripod and the new iPad with Sky Safari Pro so things were a bit more involved this year.  I don't want to leave the tripod out in the elements like I did my old observing stand (which is now history having been thrown in the dumpster last week) so that had to be set up along with everything else: 12v battery, table, chair, scope, iPad, etc.  I finally got it all out, and set up, and turned on.  I did an Easy Align and slewed to Jupiter.  Close but no cigar.  I finally found it and then slewed to Aldeberan nearby.  Way off.  I went back to Jupiter and watched it awhile but noticed it was drifting rather badly.  Aha!  It finally hit me.  I didn't have the location set properly.  Fixed that problem and re-aligned.  Now things were pretty much smack on but then I noticed another problem.  Jupiter and Aldeberan were not oriented right on the iPad.  They didn't match what I was seeing and were way to close to the horizon.  Now what?  Turned out I didn't have the time right!  I had been playing with the time feature and it had remembered where I left it.  I hit 'now' and things looked a whole lot better.  I decided to try for Vesta since I like finding things that move around in the sky and I knew Vesta was in Taurus near Jupiter.  Grabbed the handset and slewed to asteroid Vesta.  It didn't look quite right and I didn't recognize the star field so I decided to hop from Zeta Taurus which is nearby.  Slew to Zet Tau and verified the starfield.  Pretty much right on.  Way to go ETX!  It was an easy hop from there to Vesta and this time I was able to recognize the star pattern.  It actually matched what Sky Safari said it should look like.  After I verified which one of those dim 'stars' was actually Vesta, I again slewed to Vesta and the ETX barely moved.  It was correct the first time, I just wasn't sure what I was looking at.
The mosquitoes were a bit pesky tonight but not too bad.  The few clouds of earlier were totally gone by 11:30 and it could not have been a better night.  I found that my ETX FOV with the 27mm ep is about 3.6 degrees and was able to see down to about mag 8.  Unaided I was able to make out Zet Tau and probably a bit better than that if I tried hard.