It's 5 weeks into this year's rainy season and my last observing session is mor than 4 weeks ago... The more exited I was yesterday when I saw the sky clearing up after just another couple of hours rain. At 9 pm I took my 15" scope out and made quick plans for a long night. How exciting!
First I wanted to go for a real challenge - Abell 2065 in Corona Borealis. A couple of 15 to 16 mag galaxies in a cluster some 2 billion light years away. In order to train the eye, I started off with an easy object - M109 in Ursa Major. Ahhh - what a beautiful barred spiral. After 20 minutes with M109, I switched to something fainter - NGC 5958 (12,5 mag face-on spiral) not far from the Abell 2065 cluster. Again I did enjoy this galaxy for some 15 minutes. Well, now my eyes were adapted, the sky super-clear and Abell 2065 waiting!
I turned the scope a few degrees over to where the Abell cluster would be located and peered through the eyepiece at 244x, and - couldn't even see a star??!! A quick look upwards made me burst into some really bad words.... Fog was coming in... After the rain it was so humid, that now, even though it was some 26 degrees Celsius, fog was moving in and within a few minutes the whole sky was gone. Ahhhhh.... I *^&@#&*~* the rainy season.