Earthshine and a quick Bino Scan

I was unable to make use of the clear skies last night, to be honest, it also looked like very poor seeing. I did glance out tonight and see a thin crescent moon, and after quite a few shots handheld, I setup on the tripod for a few to see if I could capture a series and stack them. This didn't work, but the first one was surprisingly good. This was captured in RAW at ISO100 with a 1 second exposure. The star above the moon is Alnath or Beta Tauri.



Some time later, I got the Bresser bins out and had a look around. I think there's some high thin stuff up there somewhere, the views were quite disappointing. After some effort I had a look at M44 and it was not good. I was able to see Mizar and Alcor, but unable to see the engagement ring around Polaris. Whilst I was scanning, I spotted a moving dot. Aha thought I, must be a satellite. I tracked it in the bins for a while, then started scanning again, and what should I find almost immediately, but another one. Cool. By my reckoning, and a quick glance at Heavens Above, I think they were the Helios 1a rocket and Cosmos 1220.

As all the views seemed so poor, I gave up and came back in. The stars are not going anywhere, so one of these days I'll get a good night.