All who were still up on the field before astronomical twilight this morning enjoyed excellent transparency as well as good seeing in the last hour. My last target was M74, which was climbing to a respectable altitude. The supernova 2013ej was brighter than the foreground stars (although the sketch exaggerates it). Several enhancements tracing the arms were visible, and some of these features could be associated with the brightest of the compact HII regions. One compact HII region was intermittently but consistently visible as such, Hodge 627 in the terminal star cloud of the southern arm. 16", 225x.
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