On Friday January 31 it was clear. Like on saturday the first of February. It had not been clear for ages, at least 8 weeks. You can imagine how angry I was since I had some sort of flue and stil was feverish.
So no observational sessions? Hell no! As long as I wrapped myself up thick enough I could last an hour, or so the plan was. I did, however, have to cancel longer sessions with fellow observers. Two short sessions from the garden. I had to make do with that. But that is still better than sitting inside humming and looking out the window in anger.
The accuracy of the mount was slightly off, so I had to reset it. That took some time. At first, the objects I honored with a visit after that were really more to check if the mount was correct. But as it goes with amateurs, you lose track of time once you get busy.
NGC2392, the Inuit nebula was the first. Easy to find near Pollux. A beautiful object, even already findable in a 50mm scope. The central star blinks nicely: seen with averted vision and directly not. Also tolerates high magnification. Really one of those objects where you linger longer.

- NGC 2392 planetairy in Gemini .jpg (21.3 KiB) Viewed 424 times
I remembered NGC2420 nearby. An open cluster that I often did borderline magnitude checks on. There is a story attached to that that I will not withhold from You.

Years ago I was on vacation in Drenthe, a dark part of the Netherlands. My children were still small. At night I went into the field near a farmer where the lights of the vacation park could not reach me. I had my C90 on a heavy photographic tripod with me. I was looking for NGC2392. Couldn't find it right away and began a sweep expedition in the area. After some time I passed a faint glimmer. I did not know what it was and initially thought of a comet. After a long time getting used to it, I saw some individual points of light. Hmm, so an open cluster after all. Back at the cottage, I looked it up in Tirion's Sky-Atlas 2000 and there it turned out to be NGC2420. Looked it up a few more times that vacation. Never thought about it again until one night NGC2392 was in the main scope of observatory Rijswijk. Immediately I had to think of that faint cluster again and aimed the 14 ich scope at it. To my great surprise, in the coarse light pollution of Rijswijk, NGC2420 turned out to be less impressive than I suspected. I saw no more than there in dark Drenthe. Speaking of how severe the light pollution here locally was ( and is )
Looked up more often since then. See the sketch from 2021. I have included a map with magnitudes for my viewing arsenal.
To my surprise NGC2392 and NGC2420 were assigned as Challenges of the Month. Without knowing!
The InterGalactic Wanderer is a difficult object here in LP-country. At the time it I spent several evenings trying to find it. Eventually I succeeded with averted vision and slewing. The sketch is from three years ago with a 150mm refractor, although I've seen it with a 140mm Maksutov as well. In the sketch, the brightness has been somewhat exaggerated for the sake of recognizability. It is not that easy at all!!!
Last of the double session the planet Mars. I was still not completely better and packed myself in thick. After the observation I felt the bitter cold doing its work and rushed inside to warm up. Not finishing the sketch until coffee the next day.
The overpowering orange color and glare of the planet in the telescope makes life a bit difficult for many observers. I hear them complaining about it. I found on it to use a polarizing filter. That takes away the glare and shows many faint nuances. So the faint spots you see on the surface of the sphere ( not the darkest ones on the edges) were really there and were purposefully outlined
Thanks for reading and watching!