Large, fairly bright galaxy with barely brighter centre. Looks quite homogeneous. Located in a nice environment, rich in stars.

Tiny, very faint galaxy with no surface details and no visible core. Its shape resembles an almond. About 4:1 elongated on its N-S axis.

SQM reading: 21.23 MPSAS, 14°C.

The famous globular cluster of the Hercules constellation, perhaps the most represented globular in the press by far. A very easy object for any type and size of telescope, with a large diameter and high surface brightness. Even its position is easy, and especially nowadays it's again greatly visible on the late evening sky (on the Northern hemisphere at least). Splits fine even with small scopes, but reveals its real face with larger aperture: a globular full of separated, lone, bright stars. Behaves well on high magnification, I've increased powers upto 250x, and it kept revealing more and more of its members. For the first look, I've noticed that it looks a bit like a huge turtle, swimming from West to East, with the globular as its shell, and four star-paths as its legs.

An unexpectedly bright, but tiny (20") planetary nebula. If we already know what and where must we look for, it is an easy target. However, for me it was a really tough one for the first time: it took some time to realize that the mysterious "star" that shouldn't be there according to the star maps is in fact the planetary itself. At 71x it is completely star-like, however at 250x we are able to catch its smaller details too. It has an almond shape, elongated to the E-W directions, with a bright white core. Also towards these directions I could discover two faint little horns. It requires high magnification, and good seeing.

M10 and M12 of the constellation Ophiuchus are a pair of globulars nearly identical by size and luminosity. The latter is the brigher and less homogeneous: a globular that splits greatly, consisting many exceedingly bright members, which make it look more interesting than M10. It looks a little bit oval, elongated in the E-W directions. Its visible size is smaller than that of the M10, but both of them are easy targets, that can be noticed even in the 8x50 finderscope.

A less known globular in the constellation Hercules, a quite faint object. It doesn't split even at higher magnifications, I cannot discover a single separated star in it. If I didn't know what I'm looking at, I'd think that this may be a face-on galaxy. No wonder even Herscher catalogued this object as a planetary nebula. This would be a great challenge for amateur astronomers with smaller scopes.

A large, bright globular cluster in the Ophiuchus, only 3 degrees away from M12, therefore on an ideal night, this two together may be an interesting object for binocular-owners. Splits fine to its stars, which look quite the same, with matching brightness and spectra, with a bit brighter membere here and there. Because of this homogeneousity, it reminds me on M13, although it's smaller and fainter. Towards East I've noticed two brighter arms leaving the core area, resembling the tongue of a snake.

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.

Bright, small galaxy near a very yellowish star, which I captured on a surprisingly cold night that offered an excellent transparency in the early evening hours near the village of Jászszentlászló, Hungary during the Kiskun Astro Camp. Its shape is not perfectly cigar shaped, but its northwestern end looks a bit truncated. Its surface is not entirely homogeneous: next to its gradually brightened yet not star-like core it shows many little details, changes in luminosity of its surface. SQM reading: 21.24 m/arcsec^2, 12°C. The faintest field star visible directly is about 15.1 magnitudes bright, the NELM was 6.5 at this time of the evening.

A very faint, tiny little GX with an apparent magnitude of about 13.6-13 magnitudes. Its core is popping out strongly from the galactic plane and resembles an almond, although the Northern side of the core looks brighter, therefore it seems to be asymmetric. It demands high magnification levels. At 250x the shapes were easier to see, unfortunately because of the terrible seeing I had to step back to a lower power. Photographically it looks quite the same as NGC 4762.

A very dim, faint globular cluster that seems to be elongated in the N-S direction. Its core brightens softly, but it refuses to split up into stars even with averted vision and it also fails to respond to increasing magnifications. The object sits in the middle of some brighter stars that form a giant V-letter, pointing to the West.

Tiny, faint globular cluster with four clearly separated stars on its Western side. However, I'm not sure whether they really do belong to the cluster, or they are just plain foreground stars. With averted vision several other stars can be resolved at its slightly brighter core: two of them can be seen clearly with this technique, while some others pop up here and then when the atmosphere calms down for some moments. The core, just like the globular itself is not really sphere-like, but rather looks a little bit like an onion, with the thinner part looking to the East.

Perfectly symmetrical, sphere-like globular cluster. Cannot resolve it at all. It's a bit fainter than the nearby NGC 6517, yet it's fairly larger than that. It's located in a field that's very sparsely populated by stars, this makes finding and following it a real adventure.

The first thing that catches your attention on this planetary nebula is its marvellous sea blue colour. After that you may notice its asymmetric shape, which is just like two halves of nut sticked together, slided a bit apart. With the UHC filter on the view is even more spectacular: many additional faint details appear around the planetary, and it also appears slightly larger than without it. It demands for a very calm, stable atmosphere. The oval planetary has a longer axle on the N-S direction.

At 71x all I can notice is that a star appears in a magical deep blue colour. I had to increase magnification all the way up to 300x to be perfectly sure, that this star in fact has some extent. Due to the tiny size, the UHC filter does not help me to enhance the view at all. At 300x some tentacles appear but the whole sight is very uncertain. The object is very bright but I don't think it's any larger than 3", maybe even smaller than that. Later on I've checked some photos and I was very happy to see that those tentacles are really there, but they are visible only on the best photographs. SQM reading: 20.85 m/arcsec², 11°C.

Faint, diffuse globular cluster with a perfect circular shape and a core that's getting brighter only very gently. For me it was not resolveable, although it shows a faint star on its southern side, that may be a part of the cluster. Unfortunately the Jászszentlászló sky that was excellent this far was now ruined by the quickly increasing humidity in the air. Fortunately meanwhile this happened, the seeing got much better, so it made me a little happier on this almost Winter-like night. SQM reading: 21.20 m/arcsec^2, 9°C.

With my small telescope this is a pretty hard object despite the great dark sky we have in our second home in the Zselic. With direct vision it's almost invisible, however by moving the scope all around you can notice a diffuse, silver glow. With averted vision I'm able to see even some details. Higher magnifications vanish the object.

In the neighborhood of the famous Coathanger asterism lies this rather small, asymmetrical, faint open cluster. It's very spectacular thanks to its mysterious silver glow. About 8 to 10 cluster members are visible with direct vision, however plenty of stars are on the edge of visibility when looking with averted vision. These and the invisible companions are responsible for the shiny background glow that is elongated in the N-S direction and sometimes looking very elliptical. Despite it being very faint - or perhaps that is the reason - it is a very remarkable cluster.

SQM reading: 21.27 MPSAS, 11°C, humid.

A faint little planetary discovered by Herschel. It has a diametre of 1', even at 71x it does not look like a star, but rather like a large, fuzzy little spot. By increasing the magnification, you may notice a slight elongation in the WSW - ENE direction. By some more careful examination, a slightly brighter central region is visible to the ENE, with a faint star on its edge, which I thought to be the central star. However, as I went on with the sketching, I started to notice an even fainter star in the middle of the brighter core area, first only with averted vision, later on with direct vision too, which I believe is the real central star of this planetary.

I've discovered this little gem while wandering in the Milky Way and identified later on the map as NGC 6823. It's most interesting part is the little triangle of stars between two bright stars right in the middle of the cluster. The cluster itself is very sparse, doesn't contain many stars, however it clearly isolates well from the background.

SQM reading: 21.22 MPSAS, 13°C.

A very faint diffuse nebula in the constellation Cygnus the Swan. I've tried to observe it many times before, but this is my first clearly positive observation. It is visible without filters but it is much more spectacular with an O-III filter although this makes the magnificent Milky Way background less apparent.

A very tiny but bright planetary nebula, which looks pretty much star-like at small powers, but above 100x it starts to show some dimensions, looking like a blurred star. At 250x it seems quite large, without a filter it has some nice bluish colour. With an UHC filter and especially with averted vision its diametre grows even larger. Because of its small size it's very hard to discover any details, but by the time it looks as if the core has some tiny horn eastwards. SQM reading: 21.01 m/arcsec^2 9°C.

Tiny, yet surprisingly bright planetary nebula. Despite its name it doesn't contain any hint of blue colour visually. Its surface is very even, however with deeper examination and higher magnification some details start to show up. To the North for example, you may notice a small bump. The detailed sketch were done at 375x and UHC filter and reveals more surface details. Visible from 71x. With UHC it emerges from its background. The O-III view is not better and not worse than the UHC one. The H-ß filter seem to emphasize faint surface details, however it hides the rest of the nebula and the surrounding stars.

SQM reading: 20.45 MPSAS, 14°C.

This tinny little object is also known as the Rocking Horse cluster. The name says it all: it really looks like a little horse jumping around the space. Although it's in a quite easy position, it still is a neglected object, as when it comes to Cygnus, everyone thinks of nebulae like the Veil and its companions, and the tiny shiny planetaries. Too bad, because this cluster is a real gem! It's special features are the two brightest stars of the cluster (at the front leg and the eye), that are apparently yellow, even though their spectral class suggests a rather white colour. This optical illusion is caused by the interstellar dust that is so common through Cygnus. A very important hint: you should use a fairly high magnification when looking at this object, because it's located in a field that is rich in bright stars, which makes it harder to detect the real shape of the cluster.

Tiny yet bright globular, resolves unexpectedly easily. Especially on its edge, many stars can be separated clearly. It has a shiny core, that is - just like the entire cluster itself - looks a bit elongated on the N-S axis. SQM reading: 21.14 m/arcsec^2, 17°C.

This marvelous open cluster is instantly spectacular in the FoV. It's located near the NGC 6946 galaxy. NGC 6939 seems to have a cone-shape to the West. Splits to uncountable number of faint stars, a very rich cluster. A really nice object, but definitely needs dark, clear skies and a large telescope to appear as a showpiece cluster.

Although the giant open cluster, NGC 6940 is mostly made of faint stars, it is shown by the finderscope because it's accumulated brightness is so high. Even its brightest members are fairly faint, but the majority of its stars are on the edge of direct vision. Spectacular object, moderately well separated from its environment.

Extremely faint, tiny galaxy, although I'm sure that with better sky conditions (the rising Moon lits the highly humid sky) it would be easier and more spectacular. It's slightly elongated to the WNW-ESE direction, but almost round by shape with a core only slightly brighter than the rest. At 71x power it only appears occasionally at 250x it clearly appears by direct vision at all times, but it's a definitely hard sight.

Very faint, small galaxy, with a nearly undeterminable shape: most of the time it appears spherical, but sometimes it turns into a triangle pointing to the East. Reacts fine to averted vision, rewarding me with a much larger size, but even with this method it is just barely visible. The 15.7m star on its North appears to be surrounded by faint fuzziness. New limiting magnitude record! Two of the stars on this sketch are no less than 15.8m faint! :D

Faint galaxy, much smaller than expected. NE-SW elongation, at high magnification it shows a cucumber or banana shape, at its Western side I see a well defined edge, as if a significant dust lane would border the bright surface on this side. This feature is especially remarkable by using averted vision. The galaxy also reacts well to this observational trick.

Nearly N-S elongation, faint, tiny galaxy, with a rhombus shape. I don't see the peculiar bird shape this galaxy is famous for. The core is somewhat brighter, otherwise it looks smooth.

E-W elongated to a very small extent, but it's more or less spherical. Faint, very-very small galaxy. I see a tiny, faint little stellar-looking core.

Compact, but surprisingly bright galaxy, with an fuzzy stellar core. Thanks to this and its tiny diameter, at small magnification it looks like the member of a stellar path flowing in the N-S direction. With larger FoV it fits together with NGC 6702, but in that case its shape becomes too compact. This shape is like a rhombus with W-E elongation. For a mosaic featuring both galaxies, please click here.

Situated close to the galaxy NGC 6703, but this one is significantly fainter, although they have the same apparent size. It looks like an ellipse, a tiny little bit elongated in the N-S direction, however the view is very uncertain. For a mosaic featuring both galaxies, please click here.

Quite insignificant, small, very faint galaxy. It has the shape of an eye, elongated in the N-E direction. It has a minor stellar core. Much more interesting is the ring of stars to the SE, which is one eye of a much larger smiley face asterism. When I looked at photographs after the observation, it turned out that what I've seen is only the central part of the galaxy, probably a wide bar, and the galactic body itself is elongated in a different direction than this bar.