M10 and M12

Tonight was another clear, warm, wet night and I decided to subject my 8" to a wet bath outside. I spent part of the day making a new mount for my new daisy red-dot sight and it worked well. It's a vast improvement over the old wiggly sight. My left eye is gradually clearing up and I could finally see with both eyes! How nice to be able to actually read my charts in dim light again. I decided to try for a couple of Messier objects in Ophiuchus that I've been missing: M10 and M12. They were both fairly large and easy to find. I'm surprised I haven't seen them before. M10 looked interesting with lots of stars to set off the glow of the globular cluster. There was even a hint of Lord Rose's dark lane. After admiring these two I turned to some recent snags: M107, M80, and M9. As soon as I remembered where M107 was, the rest was easy and they are all three much nicer in the 8". I next went after the Butterfly cluster in Scorpius and it was positively beautiful tonight. All in all, an excess of dew aside, it was not a bad night. The sky was very transparent, fairly steady, and quite dark as the moon had gone away for the night.