Nova 2 - too - telescope needed!

OK, I just looked again - 5 am - for the two Nova in Scorpius and the first one remains easy i binoculars - perhaps 5.2 or 5.3 - but the second? Not in my 15X45 IS binoculars and only possibly in my 80mm ShortTube with a 20mm eyepiece. (This is an update - see the previous entry for chart and links.)

I know I had the right field. I was using a correct image, prism diagonal so the scope was more like half an 80mm binocular and this made it easy, with its wide field, to move back and forth from binoculars view to scope, I am sure I was looking at the right area. I could easily find the sixth magnitude guide star - and well above it and a little to the right is an 8.4 star I found easily. (Well, actually about 34' away.) 10 minutes above it and a little to the left is a 9.0 star and that was difficult. I kept getting it with averted vision and near it I thought I also was seeing the second nova, but if so, it's somewhere around 9.5.

Shouldn't I be able to go deeper with an 80mm scope? Yes, but these things are only 11 degrees above the horizon, so while I had 5.5 skies over head, down here in the tail of the Scorpion things were a bit more murky. Also the optics I was using were nothing to write home about - maybe a good diagonal mirror would have helped, but I do like the correct image diagonal for finding stuff. Perhaps another time I'll find with it, then switch. ;-)