Cloud conditions continue to cause great difficulty for star gazing, but tonight, God cleared away most of the clouds around sunset, and kept it clear until about 10:30pm. This gave me about 1.5 hours of pleasant star gazing.
I was able to get a brief look at Jupiter, before it was swallowed up by some north-bound clouds near the horizon. I'm still using the same 60mm telescope with only the low-magnification lens, so I still was not able to see any detail on Jupiter. But, as before, I could see four dots for the moons.
Toward the north-east, Perseus was at a comfortable angle for viewing, so I spent most of my time looking in that direction. I checked my star charts and saw that there is a double-cluster roughly in-between the top of Perseus and the bottom of Cassiopia, so I searched in that area with my binoculars and my telescope. I was not disappointed.
=> Position of the double cluster
With the binoculars, I was able to see this interesting helix-like structure, referring to the brighter stars in this screenshot:
=> Helix-like stars around the double cluster
My telescope gave me a decent view of the two clusters in the middle of the helix. It was similar to this screenshot, except I couldn't see the dimmest layer of stars in the background.
My view started fading out, and I looked up only to realize that now nearly the whole sky was covered in thick, puffy clouds. There was a small pocket of clear sky to the north-west, and so I was able to spend a few minutes looking with my binoculars at a triangle of stars, which had Acturus at the top.
=> Three stars in Bootes constellation
At this point the clouds rolled over that as well, so I was forced to call it a night. That was for the best, since I needed to get up early for church services in the morning.
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