The Leo galaxies are quite a challenge under
M66 makes an exception to this, due to the presence of two magnitude 9.8 resp. magnitude 11 foreground stars, right next to the galaxy. Another tremendous help is the irregular appearance of the galaxy. The northern part appears a bit brighter. It is nice to see M65 and M66 with averted vision in one field of view. That makes it special and satisfying. See more of them in the Challenge of the month. viewtopic.php?f=83&p=146710#p146710
M94 is an exception too , it has an obvious bright core. I am surprised it isn't mentioned more often in reports.
I had just changed the setup of my Leica Zoom eyepiece. By placing an extra projection tube between barlow and eyepiece, I not only could use my standard 98X to 196X in the 150mm achromat, but also approximately 135X to 270X. That turned out not to be necessary for the Leo or Virgo galaxies. More satisfying was the use of this kind of magnification on globular M3. More small individual stars came alive than with the usual 196X. I was pleasantly surprised, since long I considered 200X as the max. useful. I suppose the steady seeing was responsible for it.
This came in handy with the observation of Epsilon Bootis, Izar. At the newly chosen max. the fainter companion was more impressively visible, with quite some dark space between the two stars.
A startest on Arcturus turned out to be quite nice. I am curious how this turns out on Delta Cygni this summer.
Finally I went for SS Vir a red carbon star. It is part of the April challenge of red carbon stars. viewtopic.php?f=109&t=17322 This image can be found there too, amongst others. Then....the clouds came in. It had been a small two hours open space. I rushed to collect my gear and cover the mount. 15 minutes after I came in it snowed and hailed.