Being in the 'Rat, we rather excitedly watched the sky off and on throughout the day, in between eating and napping. It stayed clear, so after we recovered from dinner we took the scope out. One problem: J, in his forgetful optimism, had poo-poohed my query of whether to take my beanie and/or gloves. Turns out that actually, yes! They would have been a good idea. Fortunately after standing out there freezing in a jumper for a little while, my mother-in-law rescued me with gloves.
It was a glorious night. Of course, it wasn't as dark as it could have been, what with the half-full moon that was casting extreme shadows. Looked at it for a little while - hadn't added the filter, so I was half-blinded when I looked away. But it did look awesome. I could see the Montes Appeninus really clearly; it's the first time I remember noticing them. There was also an awesome large crater to the south, with two smaller craters within it that looked fantastic, the rims just catching sunlight. J thinks it might have been Clavius, but I'm not convinced. I didn't check last night because my hands were too cold.
After recovering from moon blindness, we turned on Orion - and the nebula looked just amazing. We played around a bit with the different eye pieces, experimenting with the wider view and the close-up view. For me, the wider view didn't do that much; it's kind of cool to see more stars, but since the other stars in the sword are actually little clusters, it's not like you get a line of stars like you see naked-eye. Anyway, M42 itself was breath-taking. We also saw a satellite zooming across the sky, which was very cool.
While J was looking at the nebula, I was looking around the sky. Off a bit to the north was Sirius, of course, and a series of stars that looked like they just had to be a constellation. Oh, of course; after looking it up they turned out to be Canis Major. Exciting to recognise it!
Next we swung a bit west, and J set himself the task of finding 47 Tuc, that lovely globular cluster. He found one, which we had a look at, but it was too faint to be the right one. At that point I got out the map and reminded J exactly where he was meant to be looking. Then we found it, and it was incredible. With the zoom lens, while it got a little fuzzy you could also see more detail in the centre - lines of darkness, and zillions of pinpricks of light. With the wider view we could see the tendrils that extended out a fair way from the central blob. Very rewarding.
I'm very keen to see the Magellanic Clouds (also Andromeda, because, hello! They're really outside our galaxy!). We'll never see them from home, so it was a good chance to try from here. Sadly, I could only get the vaguest hint of the Small Cloud, naked-eye; there was the moon, and Ballarat puts out a surprising (and annoying) amount of light pollution. By the end of our viewing session, though, the Large Cloud was quite obvious naked-eye, so I declared we should have a look. Of course, it was a bit disappointing, because it's not like looking at a nebula, although I originally thought it should be. Instead, it's a dense but not that dense conglomeration of stars, and I'll have to do some studying of the map to be able to pick out genuine features. I did see a globular inside it, too, though.
Finally, we finished the evening by checking out the Pleiades. We started by looking through the 35mm, and really that was the best option - it's such a huge group of stars that anything smaller doesn't really do it justice. So I'm sold on it for objects like that. It really is a delightful cluster.
Here's hoping Boxing Day delivers clear skies, too. Because I'll be starting with gloves this time.
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