Ever had one of those nights?

You know, those nights where you just can't seem to find a darn thing? That was me last night. I was making all my usual stops, M57, M13, etc. I decided to try one of my favorite Globs, M56. Now, I've visited this object many, many times before, but tonight, it's like it just disappeared! I swear, I must have tried at least a dozen times. I checked my charts over and over, changed eyepieces, and still nothing! I ended up spending the rest of the night trying to hunt it down, but with no luck. Just a few nights ago I found it in seconds. The seeing was good, so I just don't have a clue. Anyone else have these kinda nights?

I'm with you on that! What I thought was a great night turned out to be lousy. It looked clear but the transparency was really bad. When I started going for the faint fuzzies, I couldn't find a thing. This has happened more than once.

Such nights can get frustrating if you limit your targets. On the other hand, if you give yourself more room to explore, you may find the night will return back the favour.

Most nights I can starhop to any target within 30 seconds. But there is that rare occasion I have trouble finding the moon.

Last time out, I was finishing up a decent two-hour session, and going to make M52 my last object of the night. I've been there dozens of times, and it's a relatively easy starhop. But for some reason it took me 10 minutes and several trips back and forth between my atlas before I finally found it. Maybe I can just blame it on fatigue (I'd been up since 3am that morning), but nonetheless it was frustrating!

Yup, been there, done that many times because of the murky, light polluted skies here on the Gulf Coast. If you cannot find the likes of the Ring Nebula, the skies are not only murky, they're awful and the only thing you can do is try again on another night. Besides, the moon is nearly full and that alone will wash out faint objects from view.

Heck, I even had one of those "can't find anything" nights with Go-To. I scrolled down too far entering a Calibration star one time and all of a sudden the scope started pointing to places it shouldn't. Took me nearly half an hour to sort it out.

Yes last night, i had a *stompy feet* moment when i couldn't even find Jupiter then i realized it was because it was hiding behind a cloud