Normal weather on a Thursday night would be cloudy and gloom. Not what you need when you have your astronomy groups meeting! I am the Chair of the University of Birmingham Astronomical Society and can speak from experience - Thursday nights are a no go for observing, In Birmingham anyway.
Tonight was different. We were not meeting as term has finished. So I am at home. No telescope to use as this is at Uni with the society's. So I grabbed my mom and her binoculars. Binoculars can provide some excellent views of the night sky. The sky in Birmingham is pretty light polluted making the first 20 or so degrees above the horizon a no go. I thought I'd take a look at Comet Machholz. I didn't think I would find it due to it being faint at the moment and quite low down. I was correct I didn't see it. Well I may have but nothing convincing. It I think it one for a telescope in the urban environment of Birmingham. If I was in the countryside then it wouldn't have been a problem. Well I decided to carry on and show my mom a few things that she may or may not have seen in detail before.
I get more enjoyment in showing people the night sky than actually seeing it myself so I was quite pleased about this opportunity. We started off with the obvious. The Pleiades - M45 (the Seven Sisters). There are many more than seven stars when you use binoculars. In fact the whole glory of this open cluster is fully shown (see: http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m045.html). A wonderful sight one that I will never get bored of. We then looked at the Hyades - also is Taurus. This is not as spectacular as M45 but is pretty nice. M39 in Cygnus followed. Then finally the wonderful nebula of Orion in his sword. Wow! Even through the small binoculars its nebulosity could clearly be seen.
All in all a good nigths observing... shame other Thursday nights arent this clear.
