So... I figured I'd ask the powers that be if I was just out of line expectation wise. Turns out... noone is seeing much of anything on Mars right now due to it being so far away from Earth. In 2012 it'll be close again and will allow us to see something, but considering it's 1/2 the size of earth and pretty far away (see pic).
Anyway... they were hugely helpful and gave me a ton of tips and DSO's (Deep Sky Objects) that I need to be checking out to get the most out of my telescope. Tonight was more productive than usual because I didn't bother trying to eke out 8mag galaxies and went for the ones they'd mentioned that were in my line of sight.
12:30am 5/29/2010 - 73° with a full moon to make my eyes hurt when I'm not in the shade.
I started with binoculars thinking, "I'll just take a peek for a little while... no harm there", but eventually had to get the big gun out because it's just too clear and nice to not to.
My binoculars are basically like having 2 70mm telescopes on your head with magnification of 15x (Celestron Sky Master) and are bad ass when you can keep them still.
M13 / 5.7 magnitude - in the "keystone" which is part of the constellation Hercules, through the binos was a nice fuzzy ball, but using the Barlow (3x) and 15mm (for a total of 240x magnification) was a beautiful cluster of stars. Had the moon not been out smacking me about the head and neck with a broken bottle it would have been gorgeous.
Draco V - nice double star described as cat's eyes (looks like Derek Riggs handiwork) - very nice at 112x magnification (32mm).
My last constellation was Aquila (which has an alpha of Altair) and the nearby Brocchi's Cluster, called "The Coathanger". I couldn't find the cluster w/ the scope, but with binoculars it totally looked like a coathanger with 5 stars on the bottom and the hook made from another few.
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