Last Two Messiers Found

Yesterday morning I found M77 and M74, which were the last two on my list. I had started a mini-marathon near the end of March with the idea of getting the last 30 or so that I hadn't seen before, but these two were lost in the glare of sunset by the time I got a clear west horizon view a couple of weeks later. Since then it has been a combination of moon, weather, smoke from the Missionary Ridge fire, vacation, etc. , but I finally got everything together. I found them with my 6" f5 homebuilt dob, which I used on most of the rest of the list.

One of my delays was building a 10" dob that got finished (still needs some work) causing all the overcast skies this last month. I finally got to use it last night to find many of the summer Milky Way favorites. I thought this was a somewhat mediocre mirror (that needs recoating and is f9.6, so it is quite unwieldy) but the views are so much better than the 6" that I may have a big problem - now I want a 12.5". Help! What is the cure for this "fever"?

Charlie

Congrats on the Messier list completed! BTW, there is no cure to the "larger mirror" syndrome. A more terrible disease is the premium-eyepiece disorder and the multiple-scope-sickness. Although, my wife thinks she has found a cure, no more viewing the classifieds on Astromart :-)

Clear skies!