The spiral galaxy of M51, better known as the Whirlpool-galaxy is one of the most famous Messier objects. Thanks to its position and high luminosity, it's a very easy and impressive target. The spiral arms of M51 look beautiful and sharp, and with a little patience you can see even the bridge of matter between it and its interacting companion (NGC 5195), also with direct vision.

Today was the Summer solstice, so it's not surprising that even at 11pm the Western horizon is still shining in bluish colour, however at East the hazy patch of the Summer Milkyway is already easily noticeable. The spiral structure of the M51 is readily visible at 71x, surprisingly easy and so is the supernova SN2011dh, which I estimate to be at 12.3m and is located in the middle of a large outer spiral arm towards ESE from the galactic core. At such a high brightness this supernova is possibly one of the brightest for this year, at a very easy position for Northern hemisphere observers also with much smaller scopes.

This globular cluster is really breathtaking. More than a dozen of stars can be separated also with direct vision. By using averted vision, this number jumps to several dozens. It is not really getting denser towards the centre, although what we see is actually the core already: the real diametre of the cluster is actually 21', yet the half of its gross weight stays inside a circle of 1.1'.

The well known M64 or Black Eye Galaxy (sometimes mentioned as Black Eye Nebula) is a fine specimen of large and bright Messier galaxies (although Charles Messier didn't know what galaxies were). It has a tiny star-like central core with a noticeable bulge around it, and a thin dark patch of dust lane to the NE of the core. This feature is not easily visible. On the major axis of the ellipse I can detect signs of spiral arms on both sides of the core.

SQM reading: 21.44 m/arcsec², 6°C, light wind.

This triplet of galaxies always make me smile: I'm calling it a "dumb face" cluster. The M65-66 double is a classic, easy Messier-object: both can be well seen - perhaps the latter having a brighter, almost star-like core region. It's not clear for me why the NGC 3628 was left out of Messier's catalogue: it's not at all a difficult object either. Its brightness is quite close to that of M65 and while wandering around looking for its more famous companions, you may most probably bump into this one also.

The famous double galaxy of Ursa Maior is an easy target with any kind of telescope. The brighter M81 spiralgalaxy can be detected even in the finderscope. Its smaller and fainter companion, the irregular M82 is interesting especially when looking at larger magnification levels, with several clearly detectable dense areas. Looks best when having a FoV of at least 1°, as in that case both of the galaxies can be fit into one picture. The nearby NGC 3077 is also worth a look, although it's even smaller and fainter than the M82.

A surprisingly excellent seeing calls for a high-magnification study. As Saturn is just below my horizon, I decide to pick a rather complicated structure: the irregular Cigar galaxy of the UMa constellation. Thanks to the 300x power, the FoV is coal black, the galaxy is so bright that it actually ruins my dark adaptation, faint stars sparkling at the edge of averted vision visibility. Too bad, that the galaxy itself is located on a rather light polluted part of my sky, but it still shows plenty of structures. During the observation, I had my second magneto-acoustic meteor experience in my life: this is the phenomenon when you actually hear a swishing or crackling sound at the same time the meteor flares in the atmosphere. The common part in both cases were that I was standing VERY close to a wire mesh fence, and a <0 mag meteor in the zenith, with a definite ionized tail.

On 2014.01.22 Fossey et al. discovered this possible supernova in the famous M82 irregular galaxy. Surprisingly the discovery were made at a visual magnitude of about 11.7m, which is quite bright, and especially weird that in such a well-known galaxy a supernova can remain undiscovered for so long (days actually, within the range of a 12" telescope visually). I believe that the reason might be that on long exposure photographs the SN is not so different than the little bright knots in the GX, and probably many algorithms missed identifying the exploded star.

So, despite the fact that the satellite images shown 100% cloud coverage, I decided to believe to my own eyes and not satellites, and went out to check the sky condition. To my surprise, the sky was clear! There was a nice little hole in the clouds above me, hooray!

Although the GX was in a bad position for me - just half a degree above our roof, and right in the middle of the light pollution of a nearby lamp and the smoke out of our chimney - I could catch both the GX and its SN very easily. I've estimated the SN at a visual magniture of 11.4m, which is about 0.1-0.2m lower than actual measured brightness around that time.

The conclusion behind this supernova is that there is still a good chance to beat robots and algorithms and discover a supernova visually! Just imagine how many observers around the globe have seen this supernova without realizing that they have discovered something new.

Almost all members of this spectacular cluster of galaxies is fairly bright, except maybe for NGC 4479 and NGC 4402. The Messier galaxies are especially bright: M84 and M86. The galaxy NGC 4435 has a star-like core and NGC 4438 is remarkably peculiar shaped. The image is a mosaic of multiple FoV's, with a total coverage of about 1x1.5 degrees. The galaxies from left to right are: NGC 4479, NGC 4477, NGC 4473, NGC 4459, NGC 4461, NGC 4458, NGC 4435, NGC 4438, NGC 4425, NGC 4402, M86, NGC 4387, NGC 4388, M84.

SQM reading: 21.32 m/arcsec², 7°C, light wind.

A rather neglected globular in Hercules. I wonder why it is treated like this compared to M13, as it is very bright and spectacular, although its visible diameter is only about half of the more famous companion. Its core area even looks brighter than that of the M13, it looks less homogeneous. It behaves fine at higher powers, at 167x it looks perfectly split.

Small, compact open cluster, mostly made of faint stars. If I turn off my observers torch, the FoV is full of fainter stars - not a surprise as the Milky Way creates the background for this object.

The M97, also known as the Owl-nebula is a very spectacular, famous planetary, in the vicinity of M108. It's a nearly regular circle, slightly elongated in E-W directions. Also on the Eastern and Western corner one can find two darker spots, the eyes of the owl. The planetary itself is quite an easy object, looks much brighter than the 11m as listed in catalogues, a homogenous shape with sharply fading edges. Discovering the eyes is a bit harder: especially the Western spot is tend to blink. Using your averted vision helps a lot to see the details. I was using my Baader UHC filter to finish this sketch, however according to my experiences a slightly better seeing helps much more than the filter.

Large, spectacular spiral galaxy with a gross magnitude of 8.4, two magnificent arms and a very shiny core. Elongated towards N-S, which is also the direction of the two arms. The Southern arm looks brighter, while the Northern one larger and blurred. Only a quarter degrees away you can find its easily detectable companion, the NGC 4248 (12.5m). If you can see this tiny galaxy, you should take the chance to look around the M106 in a radius of 1-2 degrees, and observe the other members of the galaxy-group named after it. Around half a dozen of the smaller galaxies are brighter than 4248, and only a couple are similar or fainter.

Shiny, elongated galaxy near the famous Owl-nebula. Its core looks almost like a star, I estimate a brightness of around 12m. More dense parts are visible, the most notable is the very shiny area towards the Western end of the galaxy.