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.