My First Few Months

Because I am a bit late starting the blog I have already spent the last few months searching the skies for interesting sights but I don't want to spent ages going over everything I have seen. Therefore I am going to try and just going to point out a few of the important things I have seen so far and maybe post a few pictures.

So on my first night I didn't really know what I was doing and just picked a couple of random stars and the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). Now I fell into the trap of believing I could see something like all the pretty pictures of galaxies you see around the web and was therefore a bit surprised when all I saw was a lovely smudge in the sky. Oh well, at least it is still amazing when you realise that smudge is billions of stars!

So the next night I just set the telescope out the front for 20 minutes so I could get a view of Jupiter and this time I wasn't let down. I could make out the four Galilean Moons of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto which were very obvious. I also managed to make out the banding in the atmosphere and even get a little glimpse of the giant red spot. It was seeing this that made me go out and buy the Xbox Webcam I mentioned in the last post and managed to take a few pictures of Jupiter such as the one below.

After this I also grabbed some nice views of the Moon and did try and take an image of that but my attempt at stitching about 40 images together didn't work as I managed to miss a section of the moon. After this I decided to jump back to the Deep Space Objects and took my first view of the Orion Nebula (M42) which was superb, with a dusty cloud being visible alongside the Trapezium which is an open cluster of stars at its heart. 

Of course at this point there was news circling the internet about a Supernova occurring in Cigar Galaxy (M82) and I decided to point my scope that way. Unfortunately I couldn't see the bright supernova but I did see the  galaxy and even managed to catch Bode's Galaxy (M81) at the edge of my field of view.

The final objects I have been looking at are multiple stars and I have managed to split a few of them now including Mizar, Almach, Eta Cassiopeiae and Polaris. I even did something completely new and decided to try and sketch what I saw when I was looking at Polaris. I don't normally do "arty" things but decided to give it a go and you see my digitized results below.

You should just be able to see the smaller companion at around the 5 O'clock position from the main star and if you are wondering why the East and West are the wrong way around it is because my telescope flips the view so that is how it appeared to me. As a note, supposedly the main component star is yellow and the smaller one is blue but I just saw white, white and more white! Anyway, I quite enjoyed doing this so I think I will at least try and sketch all the double stars I see in the future.

Other than this the only other interesting experiment I have undertaken is trying to use my Point and Shoot camera to take some wide field shots. I have managed Ursa Minor, The Plough, Orion & Taurus so far but I find myself limited by the bad noise levels my camera produces in the dark. I do plan to get a DSLR at some point but my favourite image I have taken is the one I did of Orion and it is shown below.