Some ETX doubles in UMa

I can't believe it's been several months since my last observing session! Actually I've been out a couple of times since returning to Rolla in April. Once with the 8" dob to check out Saturn that is nice and high in the evening now, another time earlier this week to check out the four planets at dawn (I only saw two, Jupiter and Venus peeking through the murk before sunup), and once with my ETX70, only to find that the trip up from TX managed to break my focus knob 'fix' loose. I had to use some epoxy to re-glue the washer I used to patch the broken plastic. It worked nicely tonight and I re-acquainted myself with the procedure for entering custom objects. I selected a few binocular doubles from May's S&T. There was an almost half moon, clear, and about 78F, dry with no dew, and a bit windy. The moon cast enough light that the dimmer stars were washed out but I was able to see Polaris easily. I even managed to spot a dim 7.6 mag star between Mizar and its companion Alcor in UMa. A bright satellite passed by Mizar about 10:00pm. It was the first of three that were to pass through my FOV tonight. It's always nice to spot a satellite this way. D1 or Gamma and 11 UMi were the first stop after alignment. I thought they looked a lot like Mizar and Alcor. Next on my list was TT and 8 UMi. These are mag 6.8 stars that were barely visible in my 7x50's but clear in the ETX. I found this pair by GOTO Kocab. The pair I called D2 (lambda and 2 Draconis) looked blue and orange to me. The group I called D3 was a nice string of four stars that I thought all looked blue-white. The 'crouton' in UMa was too large for the ETX but I saw it easily in 7x50's. All in all, it was a pretty successful night.