The moon will not rise till later in the evening and the skies have started to clear after our New Year's snowstorm, so guess where Joanie will be tonight? That's right, all bundled up, sitting under the stars with one of my
astronomy binoculars and some hot chocolate. Right now, a clear sky without a moon is about the best Christmas present I could receive. As an open star cluster lover, winter is one of my favorite times of the year for open clusters, not just in terms of brilliance, but also in terms of sheer numbers. Sometimes hard to know where to begin, but I usually start in Taurus and move toward Monoceros as the evening progresses. When I am really ambitious, I will mount a
giant binocular, such as my Nikon 10x70, on a
tripod, but I much prefer to handhold a binocular when possible. Simplicity, especially freedom from a tripod, is one of the things that makes
binocular astronomy so attractive to me