I had admired the moon yesterday as it was a new crescent, with Venus and Jupiter still close by from the recent near-miss conjunction (from my location), I decided to have a go with the telescope tonight.

I had the telescope set up before sunset, the moon and Venus were clearly visible, as the sun set but it was still light I also noticed Jupiter and Mars so I had a look at both - Jupiter was looking very nice, several bands visible and four moons in a long line (still only just dusk, daylight practically); Venus was in half-phase but still amazingly bright in the daylight. The moon looked good too, just the crescent was visible at this time, stunning to see the whole moon in the 38mm. I decided to turn the NEQ6 off and come back outside after dark.

I switched my attention to the earth-shine lit shadowed portion of the moon, it was visible with the naked eye and through the scope was a dim mystery, the usual dark areas and major craters just visible through a purple-ish haze.

Had a bit of a random scout around, looked at one or two star clusters but the seeing just wasn't up to par for regular stars. There were a couple of funky light shows from the brighter stars close to the horizon as their light played like a multi-coloured disco ball through the earth's atmosphere, it looked crazy!

I was hoping that Saturn would make an appearance before 10pm but it didn't, blocked by buildings and hedges no doubt. With the seeing not brilliant it would not have been as good a view as the one I had of Saturn recently anyway.

With the moon all ready to set I decided to pack away, there had been hardly any dew to speak of but I sense it was just beginning to come on as I was packing up, my filter case top was covered in it.