The crab was a spectacular sight visible as a large bright slightly elongated 'S' shaped structure. It was very detailed with a lot of light variations and had quite irregular edges with a faint extend the glow from the southern end of this 'S' shape. There were several stars superimposed across M1 and two close stars at the heart of the nebula which I would like to think was the crab pulsar of magnitude 16. I estimate the size around 6' in diameter.
NGC 1647 - 8.75 inch reflector
This is a large scattered cluster and not very impressive visually with around 55 stars arranged in arcs but I did see some doubles within the cluster. A bright yellow star was seen at the south of the cluster and all of the stars are white.
NGC 1514 - the crystal ball nebula - 10 inch reflector + Watec
This was much fainter than I imagined, it was very diffuse and I actually thought that some tenuous cloud had obscured it! The nebula itself was circular but was much fainter to the SW and the internal ring seemed to be very irregular and patchy but the 9th magnitude central star was easily seen but this object definitely needs a second viewing possibly with a UHC or OIII filter in place.
M 45 - the Pleiades - 16×80 binoculars
This was well seen in the big binoculars looking like diamonds sprinkled on a sheet of black velvet. Visually I saw a few dozen stars in the cluster and most were faint and minute compared to the seven main stars and many of the stars in the cluster seem to be double though this is probably a line of sight effect and all stars looked white in colour.