Pulling Out Big Bertha

We had a friend over for dinner last night, so I dragged out Big Bertha and the 5" refractor. I can't say that Big Bertha does any better of a job on something bright like the Moon (which was just the faintest sliver last night) or Jupiter than the refractor in terms of detail--but oh, on the dark sky objects, wow!

The Ring Nebula (M57) was so bright! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to locate either the Hercules cluster (M13) or the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), both of which I have found before. There's some practice to this, I'm afraid, and I'm out of practice.

Now, if the sky would clear, I would work on the practice.