It is still clear with no moon tonight but there were some clouds earlier, it was dewy tonight, and rain is predicted for Saturday so I decided to make another night of it and see what I could do in the Virgo area with my 8". After fiddling around a bit, I went after M98, 99, and 100 in Coma by hopping along a line between Denebola and Eps Vir. About a field width of my 9x50 past Denebola I noticed a 5 star asterism that reminded me of the head of Scorpius. This makes a nice anchor for these three galaxies as all three are near one of the 5 stars: the two ends of the 'head' and the middle of the 'tail". M99 was the best of the three, being a largish blob near SAO100039. M98 is an elongated dim patch near 6 Com.
I finally gave up trying to read my paper charts and set up my laptop outside. That made it much easier to verify star fields but I still wasn't able to find any other objects. This is a rich area but I'll need to be better prepared to be able to find them with my dob. I doubt that they are bright enough to do well with the ETX-70 either.
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