Second night's viewing!

Not as cold tonight as last, which was a relief; or perhaps I was better rugged up. At any rate, we stayed outside for maybe an hour and a half, and only my nose got a bit chilly. Also, we decided to take the laptop out, set up on a stool under the tripod, with Stellarium loaded up so we could have a go at finding some stuff.

Firstly, Jupiter - again. I might have seen three bands this time; certainly two dark bands were quite visible. Io and Europa quite close in; I was rather hoping that if we stayed up long enough we'd see a transit, but J looked it up and apparently they will pass behind. This has therefore become a goal - to view a moon transiting Jupiter. Can't be that hard, surely? A matter of diligently reading the ephemeris when Jupiter is clearly visible, I presume.

Next, we swung over west to have a look for some stuff in and around Scorpius and Sagittarius. I've never been very good with constellations; it was very exciting for me when I learnt to pick out all of Orion, a few years ago. One of my big achievements for the evening therefore is now being able to pick out Scorpius! He's very obvious when you know where it is, and actually makes sense as a scorpion's tail. I can roughly pick Sagittarius, too - although he doesn't make nearly as much sense as Scorpius. And Capricorn, which I basically made out because Jupiter was in it, is just bizarre as a goat.

Tonight we had a look at a number of Messier objects: the Butterfly Cluster (M6; not entirely positive we saw this one, actually - we tried hard thoguh), M7, the Lagoon Nebula (M8), the Eagle Nebula (M16), the Omega Nebula (M17), the Trifid Nebula (M20 - I think I saw dust lanes, but I'm not positive), M21, M22 and M28 (both of the last two are globular clusters; M22 was quite bright and I could pick a few stars in it). Some of these objects were smaller than I had expected, but some were quite lovely. I'm not always sure exactly what I'm looking at, so I may not be getting the full effect, but still the view - all 2 degrees of it in the eyepiece - was generally well worth looking at anyway. I guess it will be worth looking at these again when I'm more used to looking through the eyepiece, and at picking up details... and when there are fewer lights going on at random intervals in the house next to the 'scope (argh).

Also, saw one - possibly two - meteors. Perhaps this is just a factor of actually being out there and actually looking. I'm really looking forward to being out during a good meteor shower, now. Finished with Jupiter, again, because it's just too good to go past right now.