Interestingly, last night here in Sydney, after all the predictions of doom and gloom weather, it turned out to be crystal clear albeit very very windy.
Still, a bit of wind never hurt anyone, so took the sister-in-law and her husband out to the back yard.. Was such a weird night though - no clouds, but it was SOOO light still, honestly it was like 9:30pm and the sky still wasn't black.. it was like a full moon was out but there wasn't one.
Anyway got to show them 47Tuc and the SMC, M45 pleaides, M6 and M7 before they set, came in for desert (yum), went back out to take in more of M45, the spectacular M42 (drew the biggest oohs and aahs) and NGC2070 the Tarantula and the LMC.
I had the 11x70's on the tripod and showed them views through the binoculars first, and then turned the dob to the same object to show the comparison.
I sooo wish I had a green laser pointer, would've been very handy to show where we were looking.
I would've liked to show them more objects, but a combination of:
1. The sky just wasn't very dark and so I couldn't find any clusters or fuzzies in the binos
2. I haven't yet learnt this region of sky.. i was happy when scorpius and sag were up - I knew them very well and where all the objects of interest were. I haven't taken the time to just stargaze and learn the constellations that are up at the moment - so that's my next pursuit. I've gotta take a tour of Taurus too, it looks a great naked eye object with the arrowhead shape of the horns.
Anyway still a good night in the end, didn't show as much as I would've liked but they still enjoyed the experience.
M42 @ 83x magnification (15mm EP) was the best of the night.. the detail and structure was great. Of course it made me wish I had a big expensive widefield eyepiece
