I was sketching the marvelous open cluster of NGC 1662 at 100x and just after I finished and took a final look, at 00:18 UT suddenly a fiery meteor rushed through the FoV, leaving a bluish ionized tail behind. This was visible for about 10 seconds before it disappeared forever. The series of sketches I've rendered digitally after quick drafts made at the eyepiece, using my actual NGC 1662 sketch as a background. As you can see, the tail was quickly moving to the North (thanks to the Dobsonian mount I was able to react and follow very quickly). While it constantly lost its brightness, it became wider and wider, and the most interesting phenomenon was the change of its shape: it got 'broken' at several points. Between each of these points, the tail remained straight. The joints were visibly brighter than the straight parts, just like on the sketch. I wonder if this is the regular behaviour of ionized tails of meteors, but this is what I saw. Anyhow, it was most probably the greatest 10 seconds of my observing life.

Unfortunately the galaxy is located on a light polluted portion of the sky, yet it is easily visible with 71x including the suprisingly bright supernova SN2011B to the ESE. I estimate that the brightess of the supernova is around 12.8m, about the same as the star-like core of the galaxy itself. Because of the light pollution, sometimes it looks as if the SN is just outside the galactic plane: this is because I probably see only the internal regions of the GX. SQM reading: 20.53m/arcsec², high humidity, -7°C.

My original plan was to observe the supernova SN 2011by, the newest celebrity in the stellar world. However, as it is located in an area full of spectacular galaxies, I decided to sketch the galactic neighborhood too. The supernova itself is very bright, even brighter than what I expected, and compared to the nearby stars, I estimate a brightness of abour 13.2m! It is by far brighter than the surface of the parent galaxy, NGC 3972. The two large face-on galaxies (3998 and 3982) are the brightest in the FoV, the tiny 3990 is only slightly fainter than these, The 3972 is however very faint, and I cannot detect the nearby 3977 at all. Perhaps I should try again on a night with better seeing. SQM: 21.12m/arcsec², 2°C.

Today was the Summer solstice, so it's not surprising that even at 11pm the Western horizon is still shining in bluish colour, however at East the hazy patch of the Summer Milkyway is already easily noticeable. The spiral structure of the M51 is readily visible at 71x, surprisingly easy and so is the supernova SN2011dh, which I estimate to be at 12.3m and is located in the middle of a large outer spiral arm towards ESE from the galactic core. At such a high brightness this supernova is possibly one of the brightest for this year, at a very easy position for Northern hemisphere observers also with much smaller scopes.

On 2014.01.22 Fossey et al. discovered this possible supernova in the famous M82 irregular galaxy. Surprisingly the discovery were made at a visual magnitude of about 11.7m, which is quite bright, and especially weird that in such a well-known galaxy a supernova can remain undiscovered for so long (days actually, within the range of a 12" telescope visually). I believe that the reason might be that on long exposure photographs the SN is not so different than the little bright knots in the GX, and probably many algorithms missed identifying the exploded star.

So, despite the fact that the satellite images shown 100% cloud coverage, I decided to believe to my own eyes and not satellites, and went out to check the sky condition. To my surprise, the sky was clear! There was a nice little hole in the clouds above me, hooray!

Although the GX was in a bad position for me - just half a degree above our roof, and right in the middle of the light pollution of a nearby lamp and the smoke out of our chimney - I could catch both the GX and its SN very easily. I've estimated the SN at a visual magniture of 11.4m, which is about 0.1-0.2m lower than actual measured brightness around that time.

The conclusion behind this supernova is that there is still a good chance to beat robots and algorithms and discover a supernova visually! Just imagine how many observers around the globe have seen this supernova without realizing that they have discovered something new.

Being one of the strongest X-ray sources on our sky, this star hides a really dark companion: the first ever suspected black hole, also know as Cygnus X-1.