M57 and M29

Conditions:
Good seeing, very steady, poor transparency, moon just past first quarter

Targets Observed:
M29, M57

Notes
Spent some time selecting targets tonight. Was going to sketch the dumbell nebula but couldn't find it in the moonlight and light pollution, even though it's high in the sky right now. Found M71 but it was too

Turned instead to the open cluster M29 which I saw for the first time the other night. I spent some time sketching it and marked about 25 stars ranging down to magnitude 11.53. The cluster is large in size but not very populous. The reason for this, cooly enough, is that there is a lot of dust in the cluster that obscures most of the stars in the group. It is estimated that if the cluster didn't have so much dark nebulosity, it would shine around magnitude 3.5 which would make it very impressive.

Decided to sketch the Ring Nebula (M57) as well tonight as the sky will get brighter for a while and M57 will disappear over the house and be gone by the time the new moon rolls around. Completed a nice sketch quicky, as at high power there is very little else in the starfield.