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[Andrew Robertson]

I managed a brief 5 minute visual view of it last night in my 12” F5 ultra-portable dob from Norfolk. It had been clear all evening and forecast to be clear most of the night but with a bit of cloud coming over early on. Issues were; Nautical dark commencing at 22:25 hrs, astronomical dark at 23:58 hrs and a 86% mon rising at 23:48 hrs. I decided about 23:30 hrs would be about the best time to get on it and had the scope set up by 22:30 hrs in preparation doing a few lollipops (M13, M5, M92 etc.) as a warm up. However shortly before 11pm I saw a cloud front slowly moving over from the SSW so thought I ‘d best have a look sooner. I found ngc 6939 easily enough but ngc 6946 was just detectable, a combination of it’s a low SB and a far from fully dark sky. I used the image by Wiggins (Owen Brazell had posted a link on the Webb Soc  forum) to identify the star fields. I had a fully inverted view and quickly recognised that triangle of brightish stars just ‘above’ 6946. I was then looking for those two pairs of stars below 6946 but initially just noticed the brighter pair lower down. Another look at the image and I recognised the field. Had started off with a 24mm panoptic giving x62 but changed to a 13mm T6 Nagler giving x115. Going back to the eyepiece I then located the two pairs of stars. They were very faint in that relatively brightish sky but were direct vision – just! The pair with SN were slightly brighter than the other pair. I enjoyed the view for about 5 mins before the cloud came over. As I got my eye in, the SN became quite obvious. It did clear again but only just after the moon had risen.Very enjoyable,
Andrew Robertson