Deep sky in Pegasus and Cassiopeia

Conditions:
Seeing 7/10, Transparency 2/5, some cloud, moon at 21.6% waning (set)

Targets Observed:
NGC 7331, NGC 7789, M52, M31, M32, M110

Notes

Great night for viewing. Skies were mostly clear and steady. I decided to try to find NGC 7331 one and I was successful. The galaxy lies off the southwest corner of the Great Square of Pegasus, found by following the longer branch of a "Y" made with Matar at the centre. There are a whole bunch of galaxies in this field, but with my scope this was the only one that could be seen, and even then it was only really perceived with averted vision. The galaxy has a fine spiral structure, but I could only see a very faint glow. Not liable to resolve much with only 90mm of aperture! A rare sight nonetheless, and I sketched it in my new sketch book. As I was viewing it, a meteor streaked through the field.

Cassiopeia was rising over the trees, so I tried with some of her finer open clusters. NGC 7789 is a rich cluster, lying between sigma and rho Cas, just southwest of beta Cas. It's a big patch of fuzz in the binos, resolving to an intricate cluster in the scope with hundreds of stars. After admiring this beauty it was on to M52, the latest sketch in my Messier collection. Dickinson describes this as a mini Pleides, which I can see. It has the same kind of shape, and one really bright star with most members in the 10th magnitude. M52 lies one binocular field northwest of beta Cas.

I was going to go in after that, but M31 had cleared the trees, and so I turned the scope on it and was able to easily pick out the companion galaxies M32 and M110. Was going to sketch but grew tired. I'll try in the next few days when they are well placed and the moon is down.