My first night out in the backyard a couple of weeks ago was okay although I had no idea what I was looking at.
After a night at MPAS I had a few targets I wanted to find myself in my own scope. Last night, the clouds in Melbourne cleared up and I went for it. Had a great night.
I started with
Jupiter just after sunset. I managed to easily find it and could clearly make out three of the moons (two below and one above). There looked to be a fourth further down below-left. The moons had obviously shifted from the previous week at MPAS. It was kinda cool to have seen the difference even a few nights makes. My wife was also impressed once I managed to drag her away from some Top Model show!
Then off to the
Orion Nebula. Now that I had seen it through some big scopes I knew exactly what to look for. Managed to just make out the 4 stars of the trapezium which took a bit of patience but was worth it.
At MPAS, one of the great sights I saw was
47 Tuc. It took me forever to find it as I couldn't see it with my naked eye. Spotted a small blurry star just below-right of the small Magellan clouds and then with a little moving about I stumbled on it. It was a bit fuzzy through my scope but I was pretty wrapped I managed to find it.
Then I moved off to
Pleiades. Wow, it was crazy bright!
I then took a right to
Sirius. My collimation must have been out a bit because it looked like it had a little bulge to the top-right of it. I doubt I managed to see the second star in there (Sirius is a binary yeah?).
Then a bit of a random tour around before going back inside.
Cheers,
Af.