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First day of Spring!
And remarkably for Melbourne, a bright clear sunny day, and even some reasonable seeing at night! Since I got my scope in early July, Melbourne's skies have been resolutely uncooperative (the one week when there was some good weather I was sick), so my lovely new scope has been taking up space but not getting much use.
But last night I carried it into our back yard, which although surrounded by trees and house is at least not overlooked by a street light, and offers good views I'd say of about altitude 45° and above. This meant I could enjoy Saturn and a few of the easier Messier objects, a couple of binary stars, and later on the moon.
I spend some time hunting for comet Catalina (C/2013 US10 Catalina for those of you who want to be precise) but even though I knew where it was, I couldn't find it. Maybe with a magnitude of only about 6.6 it was too faint to view under city skies. It will get brighter towards perihelion in November, so I'm sure I'll have another chance.
Anyway - a very successful night for this newbie, and hoping for more as Spring gets more spring-y.
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