At last a bit of a clear spell last night but with showers so tried the vortex 8x36 got m2,m3,m11,m24,m23,m27,m29,m31,m81,m3,m39,m34,m52,m15 and various ngcs and non m or NGC clusters.

 

Thought about doing a blog 'observing with monoculars'.I grew into them as I developed a notion that binoculars strained my eyes based on various pairs of small binoculars although I think it is psychological as my big Russian tento 20x60s don't.as I travel a lot I always pack my 8x25 monocular. You need to buy medium to high quality monoculars those cheap ones ,often8/10x20/25,are no good if you shake them you can hear the roof prisms rattle!my parents have a cheap 10x25,it rattles plus the optical path is stopped down inside which I'd guess makes it about 10x18?the image of the moon in it is dim and blurred however still better than the naked eye.as I now own the mini Borg 25mm telescope I can compare it to the Opticron 8x25 monocular. The scope gives brighter images and due to a lack of prisms no flare around things like Venus. Binoculars and monoculars,at least of the roof prism type never tried poro prisms,flare Venus and its phases cannot be seen until it drops low down this is due to the nature of a roof prism design even leica 8x20 binoculars do this.I think the reason you can see the phases when it's low is the thickness of the atmosphere filtering the light? Jupiter doesn't have the flaring problem so Venus must be the magnitude border where this happens.on the negative side the mini Borg requires a tripod,you to pack a few eye pieces plus upside down images making it not so mini!