Quick session with 15x70's

[catman161]

After doing a lot of prepping of wood for the roll off shed today I was pleased to see the skies clear this evening.

As I'm on yet another agency shift (to pay for the new kit and shed!) and up at 5am I decided to just have a quick session with the Celestron 15x70 Bins.

First thing I noticed was how cold it was! I spent about 40 minutes in total. The seeing was not too bad at the mag of the bins. The transparency was actually pretty good too. I started off in one of my favourite constellations; Auriga. I quickly found some old favourites in M36, M37 and M38. A spent a few minutes here just looking at these three lovely open clusters.

Next I turned to Perseus and had a general scan and then found the double cluster. I love these objects (NGC 884 & 869) I spent a good 10 minutes on the double cluster-such a mesmerising sight.

Next I moved on to orion and of course spent a couple of minutes on M42. I had a quick look at Betelgeuse also and then moved onto what I originally set out to look for: Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy). I had spent a few minutes in stellarium to find the general area and some landmarks to hop from in my attempt to find it. I used M45 as my first big landmark. I looked at this for a couple of minutes, another one of my favourite open clusters I then moved in a gently rising diagonal line towards the top of Triangulum and straight away saw a large fuzzy star. I looked at the comet for a good ten minutes trying to discern any tail detail but alas I couldn't see any. The moon was fairly bright and in close vicinity so I wasn't too disheartened that I couldn't see any tail detail but to be honest I didn't think I would anyway and probably wouldn't with just the bins regardless of the moon being out or not.

Anyway, it was a short and enjoyable session and I finally got a look at the Comet that everyone has been taking pictures of

Now for a cuppa and then ready for bed in readiness to go and do some extra work in order to fund this addictive hobby

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