First night viewing

Along with the telescope, J bought me a 10mm teleview eyepiece. Tonight, we went out to give the whole contraption a go.

Before dinner, we had a quick look at Jupiter, because that section of the sky was clear and it's high in the sky. I could see three moons, although one was fuzzy - it was actually two moons close together. I could also see two darker bands on Jupiter's disc.

After dinner, we braved the cold again, and brought up Jupiter, and this time all four moons were distinct. J is sure he saw a red patch on Jupiter; I definitely didn't.

As clouds started to obscure Jupiter, we swung the telescope around and looked at the Jewel Box - NGC 4755 - which was just above the tree line. Lovely! I might have seen a hint of colour, but the stars were lovely anyway. Also had a go at aligning the 'scope. Alternating between glasses on and glasses off may be a bit of a challenge; viewing without them seems to be the way to go at the moment.

After the Jewel Box, J brought up a globular cluster - NGC 5139 - in Centaurus. I slowly got my eye in and could make out some individual stars on the outskirts of the cluster. It, too, had a very nice set of stars around it.

There were a few clouds around, so to finish off the evening we swung the telescope up not-quite-horizontal and just had a look around the Milky Way - probably around Sagittarius. J happened upon another globular cluster (possibly M7?); we saw a nice open cluster; and a few random sets of pretty, bright stars (one of which was quite orange).

It was a bloody cold night. I'm starting to get the hang of the fine RA/Declination controls. We had a bit of an issue with the motor control - it wasn't tracking at all - until we switched it to Northern Hemisphere controls. Looks like we might have put something together backwards...

Also, I think I saw two meteors! One, while I was looking at the Jewel Box, might actually have been a satellite; not sure. The other was definitely a 'shooting star', though. Terribly exciting.