Another apology for not posting after events, and a recent observing log

Yeah, sorry. Here's the log:

Opened up the telescope around 8:30pm. Started off jumping around familiar objects.

• M13 - Gorgeous as usual, holds up wonderfully to high magnification
• M57 - Lovely, although I'm still trying to spot the 15th magnitude central star
• Albireo - Best around 80x-120x mag, fantastic diffusion rings
• M92 - nice globular in Hercules
• Double cluster in Perseus - first time looking at this in the 16". Would be even awesomer with a super wide field eyepiece (NGC 869 & 994)
• M31 - Andromeda, still need to see this under dark skies in binocs. Waiting to be more stunned.
• M110 - Easy find above Andromeda
• M32? - Where the hell are you....
• M33 - NEW - VERY hard object to find, although I finally bagged it. Really just a smudge of faint light that moves with the background stars when the telescope is tapped. Became more convinced after reading others' reports. How on earth did Messier find this thing?
• M34 - NEW - Nice bright open cluster in Perseus
• M76 - NEW - Fun and bright planetary nebula, similar to Dumbbell Nebula, very distinct peanut shape
• M103 - open cluster in cass, decent
• M52 - fan shaped open cluster in cass
• Tried for M101/102 - There is no reason why I should have had trouble with this, but hey, no luck
• M56 - Pretty globular cluster in lyra
• M27 - dumbbelll nebula, large and bright
• M71 - globular in sagitta, easy to find as long as sagitta is visible
• M29 - NEW - open cluster in cygnus. had to match this one up against some sketches to confirm. very sparse.
• M39 - NEW - even more sparse than M29, but confirmed against a sketch. too bad i don't have a finder!
• M2 - NEW - small globular cluster in aquarius
• M45 - Plieades. It's getting dark enough (now that the moon has fully set) that I can make out at least six of the stars in the Plieades naked eye. It is said that Messier included this cluster in his catalog to round it out at 45 and for no real other reason. Anyway, telescope shows nebulosity. Nice.
• M1 - NEW - Crab Nebula. I have a Chandra image of this wild nebula at my desk at work. Tough to make out any detail other than general shape in the scope.
• M42 - Great Nebula in Orion - whoah. and this was when it was pretty low on the horizon. lots of crazy dust lanes, tons of detail.
• M43 - NEW - nebula in orion, tough to verify, but pretty certain i saw it
• M78 - NEW- reflection nebula in orion. very faint, but saw the two 10th mag stars in it clearly.
• M36 - NEW - open cluster in auriga, beautiful
• M37 - NEW - open cluster in auriga
• M38 - NEW - open cluster in auriga, came back to check out the cross asterlism, which was obvious after it was pointed out
• Mars, naked eye - and telescope
• M35 - open cluster in Gemini
• Sirius through scope