First night of viewing in Melbourne

Our first night back home it rained, and rained, and rained.

Tonight, it didn't look too promising at sunset - lots of cloud. Twilight, I went out to check on the sky (and the washing), and there was the moon: a beautiful crescent! (A waxing crescent, illumination: 16.1%, at 3.9 days old apparently.) We had Ptolemy set up next to the door, so we dragged it out and set it up as quickly as we could. We set the tripod up lower than in Ballarat, because we have plastic chairs out there and we decided to give seated observing a go - and it's a win; so much easier and more comfortable.

I sighted on the moon, and my goodness: what a sight! I hadn't expected it to be nearly as clear as it was - incredibly exciting. The first object that my eye latched onto was Mare Crisium - and I know this because J has gone a bit nuts on Amazon recently, and one of the things we've/I've ended up with is Sky&Telescope's Field Map of the Moon - foldable, laminated, and mirror-image so it's very useable. Anyway - the Mare - with the Picard, Peirce, and Swift craters very obvious. North of that was Cleomedes, Burckhardt, and Geminus; further yet Lacus Temporus, and Endymion - which I think is a crater? South we picked out Condorcet close to Mare Crisium; then, strikingly, the crater set of Langrenus (with its hill in the middle), Naonobu and Bilharz, and then further south still Petavius. I can see myself becoming quite the fan of the moon. I might well aim to do the moon one hundred at some point.

Because we could, having a reasonable window of cloudlessness and wanting to test the limits of the light pollution in the city, we aimed for Alpha Centauri; J managed to split it, while I confess that it just looked like a particularly large star to me, mostly. J also looked at the Jewel Box, but it had gone behind clouds by the time I got outside; and we pulled up M7, too, but it wasn't that impressive.

To end the night we looked at Jupiter. Europa and Io were fairly close together on one side, Ganymede and Callisto quite separate on the other. I could see two bands, but the seeing was pretty average - think there was some high-level wispy cloud, as well as the light pollution and heat haze from the city.

All up it was a very exciting night for our first at home. The moon should continue to offer plenty of interesting viewing even when the rest of the sky is a bit hard to see because of the light pollution. And Ptolemy really is easy to use, fast to set up, and portable - an excellent choice for us.