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thorsdad
06-09-2007, 09:02 AM
Hi all,

I got up a bit early this morning (05:30 local time), as I wanted to try and check out M42 in orion, and the missus said she could see mars clearly the last couple of mornings. Well I pulled out the old little 60mm x 700mm tasco refractor:sadeyes:, with a 12.5mm eyepiece. While the little scope is not bad on Jupiter and the moon, etc, I found that the 10 x 50 binos showed a much brighter and wider field than the scope on the Nebulae and star clusters. After checking out the milky way for some clusters, and finding a few which will remain nameless for the moment???, I turned the binos to orion to check m42. Well, it came up pretty clear in the binos, although not that magnified, it was quite exciting :eyepop:, and was clearly visible to the naked eye. The sun was almost getting up now, so the stars were getting dimmer, then we decided to go to the front lawn and check for venus. After finding it in the little tasco, I thought my focus or something was out, as it appeared as a thin crescent, ala the moon. Then I remembered something about the phases of venus, looked it up on the net, and what we saw was in fact a crescent venus.
Oh, I only managed to check out mars in the binos, and could see it as a pinkish looking star:doh:.

Cheers:thumbsup:

rmcpb
06-09-2007, 09:47 AM
Great report, good to see someone getting in some observing time. Its cloudy here but no real rain to speak of :(

NQLD_Newby
06-09-2007, 09:57 AM
Well done Thorsdad. I love Venus and M42 in the mornings. Another you might like to try in the mornings is M31 Andromeda Galaxy in the north, although you have to make sure you try before the twilight starts or you won't see it properly. (Edit: only just realised your in Melbourne, M31 may be too low on the horizon for you, I'm not sure, maybe someone from Melbourne will read this and comment).

Hard to see anything up this way at the moment as its been raining/cloudy for a few days now. Woke up this morning to a very bright very sunny day.

Congrats on finding Venus. Hope you get to see Mars very soon.

erick
06-09-2007, 10:27 AM
Yes, you can do M31 from Melbourne, but you need a clear northern horizon, and preferably not too much light pollution in that direction. Currently it's probably highest around 2am. I want to have a shot at M33 at some stage (best viewing around an hour later than M31?) to complete my observations of the three largest galaxies in our Local Group! ;)

OneOfOne
07-09-2007, 07:41 AM
You might want to point to the south and see if you can find 47Tuc...I think it should be getting into a pretty good spot by morning this time of year.

CoombellKid
07-09-2007, 08:44 AM
Lots of low flying nebula here the old UHC filter doesn't help either lol

nice report, good to see someone getting a look in

regards,CS