Last night, we settled into our holiday accommodation in Maslenica, on the Novigrad Sea.

The rooftop terrace offers an unobstructed, virtually undisturbed view of the summer Milky Way—something I was able to take advantage of successfully with my binoculars on July 5th, starting at 11:30 PM.

The setting crescent moon didn't bother me much, and I was able to observe with good dark adaptation. I didn't bring any of my smaller telescopes this year, but I did have my excellent Lunt 11x70 binoculars with me.

My observing site is located just north of the 44th parallel, where the constellation Scorpius is fully visible. Only the bright star cluster NGC 6231 sits low above the horizon, making it a rather inconspicuous target for binoculars.

West of Antares, I find the globular cluster M4—an easily visible, circular "cotton ball." Sweeping the binoculars two fields of view eastward from Antares brings me to the beautiful star cluster M6; its stars are arranged in a butterfly-like pattern and appear, through binoculars, to be surrounded by a delicate, misty haze.

To the southeast, within the same field of view, lies the magnificent and bright open cluster M7. It is also easily located with the naked eye. I attempted to spot the Pipe Nebula, but found it very difficult; the sky quality was insufficient, and the binoculars' 4.8° field of view was too narrow. My small 6x24 Trinovid, with its 12° field, would be better suited for this.

To the east, Messier 8 was the next target; I could see tiny stars within the oval-shaped nebula. A small, rounded patch of brightness—the Trifid Nebula (M20)—is visible at the upper edge of my field of view. About 1° above it, the stars of the open cluster M21 sparkle.

The most beautiful object is the small Milky Way star cloud M24; it fills half the field of view of my binoculars and has an elongated, rectangular shape. Countless tiny stars of various magnitudes sparkled back at me. I now know that in this beautiful region, one can see objects from three of our galaxy's spiral arms, layered at varying depths in space.

From there, a shift of one field of view to the east reveals the star cluster M25; slightly more than one field of view west of M24, I can see the star cluster M23. Returning to M24 and shifting 5° north, the gas nebulae M17—and M16 above it—appear strikingly within the same field of view. A magnificent celestial stroll.

The Scutum Star Cloud is clearly visible to the naked eye; binoculars reveal the cloud's bright northeastern edge more distinctly, as well as the beautiful star cluster M11 nestled within it. Unfortunately, I don't have a red-light flashlight with me to hunt down more of these beautiful deep-sky objects using my *Deep Sky Travel Guide*. Next, I set out to find Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS). In the constellation Ophiuchus, I seek out the globular clusters M10 and M12.

I am seeking out the globular clusters M10 and M12 in the constellation Ophiuchus. They appear as delicate, misty little spheres and just barely fit within the field of view of my binoculars.

A good 10° to the north, the beautiful star cluster IC 4665 is easy to locate next to the bright star Beta Ophiuchi; Comet C/2017 K2 had passed by this cluster just a few days earlier, on June 21.

I find finder charts on Andreas Schnabel’s (Astrofan) website. If you project a line at a right angle to the line connecting M10 and M12, the position on July 5 lies at a distance of roughly twice the separation between the two globular clusters, in a north-northeasterly direction.

After a long search and with my arms feeling a bit weary from the 2 kg Lunt, I finally spotted the comet at this location as a faint patch of light. This is now my personal number 51 among the wanderers of the sky, following Halley's Comet in 1985.

Meanwhile, cloud cover is moving in on the evening of July 6. I was still able to observe the comet passing M10 on the evening before my departure on July 16.