On 15th Jan I had the family out watching Io’s shadow (and Io, but that was too hard to spot) transit across Jupiter’s face. This happened to coincide with a Great Red Spot transit too, though I was the only one to spot that as it quickly went out of view.

Then on 22nd Jan I took in three objects in the Secret Deep List during a break in the cloud.  NGC 2022, the kissing crescents nebula, was a pleasing sight: best at higher powers, but a lovely fuzzy round patch that reminded me very much of a smaller version of the ring nebula. At high power I fancied I saw spotting in the centre: the central star?

The next planetary nebula was IC 2149 in Auriga. Many planetaries are obviously non-stellar at first sight. This wasn’t: it looked like a star until I cranked up the mags, and then detected (quite easily) nebulocity around it.

My last object on 22nd Jan was open cluster NGC 2343, the double-mint. This was a nice tight cluster with several very bright stars and fainter surrounding stars. I didn’t have time to fully appreciate these as the clouds then rolled in.

Next day, 23rd Jan, I took in three Caldwell objects that were new to me. First up was globular cluster NGC 2419, the intergallactic wanderer.  This is notoriously difficult for smaller scopes and indeed I had previously failed to see it. This time around however transparency was good and I gave my eyes a good 45 mins to dark adapt, and tried a variety of eyepieces. I fancy I did catch glimpses of a slight grey blurr in the right place. Only 60% certain of this but it was better than nothing, and good fun trying.

Then I went for two open clusters in Monoceros: NGC 2506 (C54) was my kind of OC: a few brighter stars but then a mass of faint ones that created a nebulous fuzz. Tantalizing twinkling on the edge of averted vision. Loved it.

Finally NGC 2360, C58, Caroline’s cluster. This was lovely: a cone shaped splash of stars with a bright core and a twinkling mass of fainter stars around.

A great end to a great few nights observing.

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