Moderately cloudy and not even completely dark at 2340hrs up here at 55N. Still, there were some clear patches so I tried out the portable Zenithstar scope on a camera tripod. Looked at Mars and Saturn then the Summer Triangle of Vega, Deneb and Altair.
Thought the views were excellent with Televue Nagler 22 and Panoptic 27mm eyepieces and sharp to the edge. Tried a Baader Hyperion 36mm which was certainly very wide angle but very marked coma at the edges. This was just pure star navigation with no GoTo or polar alignment. Nice, simple fun which gave me a big grin.
Probably should scout with my 10×30 binoculars and then use the scope. A red dot finder would be helpful to aim the scope, maybe even a green laser?
Too bright for any faint fuzzy DSOs tonight and the eyepieces I was using would only give 15-18x magnification anyway so this was double star hunting territory and I got nice views of:
Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Lyrae – Spectral classes: A0 (blue) and F0IV (turquoise)
Omega 1 and Omega 2 Cygni (Ruchba) – Spectral classes: A0 (blue) and M2 (red)