Two of the Final Three: M1 and M77

After our square dance Saturday night, the stars were nice and bright and there was no wind (finally) so I decided to try for M77. I've been watching for it during the past several nights as the moon has been waning. Tonight was the night. I decided to move my observatory to the south lawn in order to get around some trees that have been growing and obscuring the view from our deck. It worked out well. I put down our fiber mat that we use with the casita and that made a nice base to work on. Cetus was fairly bright although not as nice as in Colorado or the Mojave. I pointed the 8" red dot finder a little to the left of a line from 84 and Delta Cetus, fine tuned with the 9x50 raci and bingo, right on target. M77 was a faint fuzzy but clearly a galaxy. It's a barred spiral but I couldn't make out any particular structure. It was fairly large in my 27mm ep and the field stars matched CdC just fine. After admiring M77, I decided to go all the way and try for M1 in Taurus. I found Aldeberan and the 'V' of taurus ok but zet tau was behind a tree. I finally decided to move the scope a bit and get a clearer shot. I found Zet Tau which was visible unaided and set my red dot just above Zet Tau and then fine tuned with the raci by centering just to the left of the midpoint of a a line between Zet Tau and HR1831. Once again, I was right on target and the crab nebula presented itself as a nice size fuzzy that looked vaguely like a crab. Both of these were plenty bright for the 8" and I had no trouble viewing them. At times I was able to convince myself that I saw them in my 7x50 binocs but that might be a stretch. I finished off with a peek at the moons of Jupiter and saw three on one side and one on the other. I convinced myself that I was able to see the three in my 9x50 raci by blocking Jupiter's light with the cross hairs. Jupiter was quite bright and I could almost see a shadow cast by it's light. The Pleades was also beautiful as usual. Aldeberan was low and twinkling like crazy but a pretty red nevertheless. The Moon cooperated by staying below the horizon the whole time. I quit about 1:30 am. That leaves only one more Messier: M79, a globular just below Orion and will need to wait until later in the year. I'll see if I can find it with my ETX70.