A 13 second exposure of my scope and all the snow nicely illuminated by the moon! Note Sirius in the lower left corner of the image. Wish I'd gone just a bit higher to fit Orion in the image!

We've been clouded over since the December 14th, the night of the fantastic Geminid shower so when it cleared late yesterday afternoon I decided to get the scope out. My plan was to try to get an as much time as possible before the moon came up which I did. It was about 25 degrees when I settled in at 6:20pm with a plan to observe 6-8 open star clusters in the Herschel 400.

The viewing was perfect! As cold as it was I was toasty warm with 4 layers on my legs, 2 pair of socks, 4 layers on top and my mittens and ski mask. I was able to get in a little more than an hour looking for my clusters and then spent another half hour looking at Jupiter. NGC 7209  and NGC 6940, both open clusters, were quite beautiful.

As beautiful as the views through the scope were what was most enjoyable was the snow covered landscape all around me. Even before the moon was up there was enough light reflected around by the snow that I could enjoy the view. The higher the moon got the better the scene became! The night was so calm and serene.