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Newby, which planet was that?
Hello everybody. Hope you could help.
Just joined a few days ago after seeing a telescope on the cheap at the DSE store. A celestron powerseeker 50 refractor. Exchanged it for a powerseeker reflector 127 (just over $200) when I found it hard to move the scope with the standard azi mount.
Last night I used the reflector for the first time, although I tried to collimate without any tools the day before (terrestial objects did not focus well, smudgy images especially double images, still cannot figure out why). The moon looks OK but what I'm interested in is which "planet" was that? I was looking up at the western sky (I'm north of Sydney in the Central Coast). There're 2 bight objects in the sky there around 2000 hrs. One in the middle and another to the lower LHS, nearer the horizon. The middle one appears to be Jupiter when I zoomed in. With the 20mm EP I could see 3 moons in a row on the LHS of the planet with all of them moving leftward. When I used the 4mm EP the images tracked to the right. I thought I could see 2-3 reddish lines crossing the middle of the "planet". Is this Jupiter? As for the 2nd bright object I couldn't fully focus on it. It was just a ball of light. What was it? Many thanks.
I will post later with a new thread regarding whether to return the 127.
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