Galaxies Galore

A temperature of 67°F and a humidity of 48% with light winds, no moon, and clear sky made for a perfect night of viewing here in midmo. Last night was hazy but tonight was ideal. I took advantage of the good viewing to snag a few of my Messier holdouts: M81, 82, 102?, 87, and 90. M81 and 82 in UMa are in an area north of the Big Bear with few bright stars so I've avoided these in the past. Armed with my new pocket field guide though, I was able to zero right in on the area of interest. 24 UMa is just about diagonally opposite Dubhe and Phecda in the cup of the dipper and makes a handy place to orient. I found the pair easily after that. M81 aka Bode's nebula appeared as a bright fuzzy blob while M82 aka the cigar galaxy looked like a fuzzy needle in my 8" with 27mm ep. Both were well within the fov and made a nice sight although my rommate wasn't able to see both of them. After admiring these two I decided to try for M102? The question mark is there because Messier apparently mis-identified this one. A likely candidate is NGC5866 in Draco which appeared as a tiny, fuzzy dim irregular blob in my 8". I used iota draconis as my guide star which was just barely visible unaided. Nudge about a binoc fov toward Alcaid in the dipper's handle and look for a triangular group of three 7th mag stars. M102 is near the closest of these to iota draconis.
By the time I finished admiring M102, Virgo was high above the backyard oak tree and I slewed around to tackle the Virgo Cluster. The last time I visited this area I saw too many galaxies! The star field is too dim to get a good fix on the faint fuzzies and they can be hard to identify. M87 and M90 are two of the harder ones. After a few trips back and forth between binocs, 9x50 finder, and my pocket guide, I realized that the reason I didn't find these two last time was that I had the wrong star field! This time I started at Denebola in Leo, slewed a bit toward Vindamiatrix in Virgo (that's the northermost tip of the 'cup') and looked for the first fairly bright star, 6 Com which is barely visible unaided at mag 5. It is part of a distinctive asterism that looks a bit like a 'T'. About a degree toward Vindamiatrix is a dim group of 3 mag 8-9 stars barely visible in binocs. Another two degrees down and look for a triangular group of 3 very dim stars. M87 is very near that group. M90 is a bit to the left in a box-like group of four dim stars. All of these 'guide' stars are very dim in binocs or my finder. Both M87 and M90 were faint smudges, much like many of the other faint smudges in this area!
To add icing on my cake tonight, our pack of coyotes decided to howl about 11:00. It sounded like they were in the front yard!