I’ve got a couple of nights’ stargazing to catch up on. On 12th Jan I was out in imperfect conditions (slight fog and a bright rising moon) looking at secret deep objects.

NGC 1514 (the crystal ball nebula) is a planetary nebula in Taurus.

It was decent at medium power but I did wonder if I’d have spotted it as nebulous without being told.

NGC 1746 is a large open cluster in Taurus that’s visible with binoculars. It’s now been redesignated NGC 1750 + 1758. Through the 6-inch it’s a decent sight.

NGC 1788, the foxface nebula, is an emission nebula in Orion. This looked like a slightly dimmer star than it’s several flanking stars to me, until I cranked up the power and it became slightly nebulous. Would not have spotted this myself.

On 14th I took the opportunity of some free time in the early evening to pick up both Venus and Jupiter.

Venus as ever left huge diffrcation spikes as it’s very bright, but was noticably off white and in gibbous phase.

I drew Jupiter as the arrangement of the moons was very nice: Callisto, Io, Ganymede and Europa to the right.

Here’s how the face of the planet looked.

Then later in the evening I took in two very lovely open clusters in Monoceros: The Christmas tree cluster NGC 2264.

Nebulocity was evident around the northern stars. Then the fantastic cluster NGC 2301, also known as Hagrid’s dragon.

Well worth a visit in future. I could easily see why it got its name with the long chain of stars making the head-body-tail and wider loops the wings. A superb end to some very cold viewing.

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