Contact, and some Moon and Planet shots

I was working away earlier when my Neighbour called me up, as her sister was looking at getting a telescope as she had always been interested in the Night Sky. They'd seen a couple in Jessops would they be worth it ? I suggested that it would probably be best to leave it and I'd have a talk to them this evening. Anyway, I had to pop out for a while, although the Moon looked rather special, with Earthshine still just about visible, and Jupiter and Venus were shining brightly in the night, I offered to cart my gear around so they could have a look and hopefully see some sights weather dependant of course.

I got back, and did what was needed at home, then begin to take it all next door. I could see that the mist was working it's way in as the moon was getting swathed in it, so rushed to get everything there. I setup the 15x70's in the tripod, and pointed them at the Sisters as it's such a jewel of the night sky, I figured if anything was going to convince, given the conditions they would. Whilst they were looking, and oohing and aahing, I setup the scope. It's damnably hard to align the goto when the mist is obscuring a lot of the brighter stuff. Anyway I did a rough align on Polaris, knowing it was going to be out and tracking wasn't going to be ideal and slewed to the Sisters also, a bit of an adjsutment and there they were. Disapointing really, due to the mist, but when you consider that without the optics, we could barely see them, they still showed at least a dozen of the brighter stars.

After struggling to view for a few more minutes, and unpacking the 60mm frac, as that's what she was looking at in Jessops, we packed up and went in for a bit of discussion. I also showed a couple of websites for the gear. For now, she's going to get a pair of 10x50 bins, if she hasn't already got some, probably a 60mm AltAz Celestron and a copy of Turn Left at Orion, and see how she gets on.

Earlier on I had managed to get a few tripod mounted shots of the clear skies..

The Moon




Jupiter and Venus, this has some of the Galilean moons in


And a widefield of the three