It was lovely and clear here again last night. Well up till about 12 it was. I decided to go and do some more observing and I am very glad I did. The moon as always was a fantastic sight and was not too bright so I was easily able to make out some wonderful detail of craters along the terminator. I then went down to Orion where I spent a while looking at the Orion Nebula another object I could stare at all night. The nebulosity was very clear and offered a wonderful sight. This is quite an easy object to see but you do need binoculars or a telescope. Basically all you do is find Orion and then find his sword (or dagger or whatever you want to call it). This is found by following a diagonal from the middle star (Alnilam) of the belt down to the bottom left hand star (Saiph; see star chart below). It is a nice object to see and is a very good example of a diffuse gas nebula and can be seen with the naked eye but not in the light polluted skies of Birmingham.
After spending a while with Orion I went on to the other classic objects; the hyades, the Pleiades, Saturn (not much detail through the binoculars). I really wanted to see the Hercules cluster but alas it was just too low at its highest point and was suffering heavy light pollution due to someone's idiotic back garden light! I then convinced myself that I could see a trail of Comet Machholz (but am not entirely convinced). After this I went to Auriga and hunted out M38 and M36, not the most spectacular objects through binoculars but were just obvious and was nice to see them.
More:
+ Orion Nebula Info - http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m042.html
+ Orion Sky Chart - 
+ Comet Machholz - http://www.krioma.net/blog/archives/2004_12_15.php#000462
