This was my first semi-real light for the used Portaball.  An excellent night for transparency, I was quite surprised at how dark the south and east skies were at Jordan.  Having been at Big Woods a couple of times, this was the best I'd ever seen Jordan.  For 30 minutes away it is certainly acceptable for a quick session, though something has to be done about the car headlights.

M13 and M92, in Hercules

I quickly reviewed these two great Herculean clusters, having seen them off my deck in the days after getting the Portaball.  They were stunning, of course, given their favorable position at the zenith at this early hour.

NGC 6910, in Cygnus

A beautiful open cluster in Cygnus.  At this hour, even though the fan had plenty of time to cool the mirror and the atmosphere was steady, there seemed to be some disturbing diffraction spikes at the bottom of stars.  Come back to this topic.

M57 - the Ring Nebula, in Lyra

The Ring is always wonderful.  I kept applying power, wondering if I could ferret out the central star.  I've heard other 12.5 PB owners suggest they may have seen the central star once under really dark skies and great conditions.  So this will be an ongoing challenge for me.  I applied power all the way to my 7mm Pentax XL and it held up quite well.

M4, in Scorpius

I'd also seen this great globular in Scorpius off my deck with the PB.  It was much nicer under this sky, although it was still very low.

M100, in Ursa Major

M100 was barely distinguishable from the background sky, which was light in the west.  A very faint patch of obscurity.

M51, the Whirlpool in Canes Venatici

The whirlpool had some decent contract to it although it, too, was very low in the West.  I took the focal length all the way down to 12.4mm and it held up quite well.  I was able to make out the spiral and the bridge.

M22, in Sagittarius

Gorgeous!  Even nicer than M13 in Hercules.  Sagittarius was just rising, but it was in the SSE where the sky was dark so it was quite an impressive sight, this most beautiful of Northern Hemisphere globulars.

M28, NGC 6638 and M25, in Sagittarius

While I was at M22 I panned on over to the much smaller M28.  I then panned on through Lambda Sag. and came to an even fainter cluster, with a small pinpoint center.  Consulting my maps it turned out to be NGC 6638, an even smaller and fainter globular.  I then moved through Delta Sag. to Lamda Sag. then went the same distance again and came to M25.

Swan Nebula

A great surprise!  I pulled this off my deep sky map and it only took a minute or so of hopping and browsing with my 1.5 degree 35mm Panoptic to pull this nebula out (in addition to my Astronomik O-III).  A beautiful nebula.  At first I wasn't sure if it was the Swan or the Eagle, because I don't recall ever seeing it, but a fellow observer gazed at it and said, "well there's no mistaking the shape."  No kidding!  I spent a bit of time with it, though I really missed not having the ability to apply my set of 1.25 ep's to it, since my diagonal didn't accept my filter and I don't have any 1.25 filters.  Time to spend some money...next time I don't want that limitation.

Eagle Nebula

From the swan it was a fairly easy find to move north to the Eagle Nebula.  Much less bright than the Swan but with its very own distinct shape.  I was so intent upon my first sighting of these nebula I didn't observe them too closely.

Veil Nebula

Time to hit the Veil...and did it ever knock me out!  Wow..great contrast.  I started with the western limb, my favorite.  I had seen plenty of the Veil in my friend's monster scope so I was wondering if I'd be disappointed in the 12.5.  Not at all!  Tons of contrasted area, particularly the eastern part of the western limb, the finger section.  Now I was really excited.  But time to start packing it in, as the moon started washing things out.  All told, a great night for observing, despite the annoying headlights of boaters coming and going.