The next night, in the Grampians

To be honest, it felt like a bit of a dud night. I was using Keppler (Tak128), and it was quite windy so it was a little harder to manage than little Ptolemy would have been. Also, I had chosen some dud objects to try and chase: that is, they were smaller and/or dimmer than I realised, so they were hard to find and/or actually see. Le sigh.

Jupiter looked very average. This was largely to do with the wind; it was hard to get a steady view. Basically pointless with the 6mm eyepiece; 10mm was a bit better, with a few bands of cloud visible. I then tried to find a few things but got frustrated, so J hauled me over to Copernicus to show me some galaxies. First, though, IC418: a groovy little planetary nebula, which looked amazing through the 4mm: that's 450x magnification, J assures me, which sounds like a lot. Galaxies: NGC253 (a large grey smudge of a galaxy, brighter at the centre with a couple of very bright spots, which may actually not be physically associated with it? also possibly a dust lane); NGC288, NGC247, NGC300, and NGC7793 (variations on Grey Smudge, some larger than others). Could not see the dwarf galaxy in Sculptor.

To finish the night I went back to Keppler. I looked at the Large Magellanic Cloud (the detail continues to amaze); Omega Centauri (huge, but I think 47Tuc is still my favourite); M79 (a great little globular); M78 (nebula, not that bright); and, naturally, M42. Which was a happy way to finish the night.