Last night was a night under the stars for the first time in what seemed like ages. Breaking cloud from about 10ish meant the scope was put out for later and I hoped for the best and the clouds didn't close in on my location. As it turned out, lucky me.....

 So after polar and GOTO alignment, my initial thoughts were 'what first?'. Most of the time, I have at least two or three objects in mind when I'm out but not today. Luckily, the 'tour' button on my handset came to rescue for my lack of imagination and flicking through the various objects it came up with the Blue Snowball, I've given this a miss before as it's a planetary nebula and it just hasn't been dark enough to view these properly recently but I thought 'what the hell' and sent the scope in that direction. Unsurprisingly. I didn't see much at all for several reasons, it's small, it wasn't properly dark and it was low down in the sky. Oh well. Just checking through a book to get some more info on it, it tells me the Snowball is in Andromeda. Hm, I've never seen the Andromeda galaxy, shall I give it a go? Too right, so after a quick re-locate, there it is. Yeah, I know it's low down and nowhere near it's best position for viewing, but it still looked pretty impressive to these virgin eyes. No detail but the outline gave me a good impression of the size of it (big!). I'm sure this will be on my list for next few months I can tell you!

Rasalgethi came next. Book will tell you that it's a good colour contrast double of one red and one green star, but I always find the red star a little washed out (most likely down to my slight red/green colour blindness). Still, it's a good double to gaze at and as it's a fairly tight double, you do need to crank up the magnification a bit. I didn't bother with Albeiro as I've seen it many times recently so where next?

The Ring Nebula of course! (haphazard moi?) The last time I looked at it was a while back and it was pretty low in the sky so it wasn't the most spectacular of sights. At the moment at roughly Midnight, it's around the Zenith so I gave it another go. Much MUCH better this time! Bringing the magnification to about x200, you can see the ring itself with a fair bit of detail but using a UHC filter did nothing to it, not dark enough I asume. As it spins slowly westwards and the skies get darker, I'm sure the filer will come into it's own, just not now while it's hasn't been that long since the equinox. 

Due to the ecpliptic being low down at the moment, and my house facing south from my garden, I haven't seen Jupiter yet (but I've got a rather tasty grab & go set up on the way though!). This also goes for the constellations on there too, so unfortunately there's a few objects that'll have to wait until next year so still without any idea of what to look for,  I'll give the tour button a go and see what comes next...

... the double double. Ok then. It's good! It's nice to look at if you can split both stars in the same view as you've got the milky way as a background to frame it nicely. Hm, lets check the time, blimey 1.30! The kids'll be up early (no rest for the wicked here ), I know it. I could have stayed out for ages but I can't deal with my boys without at least a half decent night's sleep. So it was with great reluctance I packed up and headed indoors for a cuppa and bed. After the rubbish weather we've been having recently, it was nice to get out and have a good session. The forecast is saying the weather is going bad again for the next few days so I'm well happy I managed to get out.

Clear skies one and all.

Tony...