Tuesday November 29th

First clear night since I acquired my scope and an opportunity to observe from my back garden.

Not a perfect observing site by any means - but probably similar to many suburban observers, plenty of light pollution and obscured to the north and east by houses and trees - view south reasonable - but trees on the horizon and to the north the town of Newark gives a lovely orange glow LOL!

On a good night I can typically see stars down to about mag 4.5 - I usually look over at Ursa Minor and how many stars I can see gives me an idea how clear/dark the sky is.

Anyway after setting up I looked at the night sky with the naked eye to get my eyes dark adapted. While familiar with the famous constellations - some of the smaller/more obscure ones are new to me so I took the time to ID Triangulum (obvious between Andromeda and Perseus) and Aries which was an attractive dog leg of three bright stars just south of Triangulum.

I've a pair of 8x42 binocs I've always used for birding...so now was the time to train them on the night sky - M31 was visible as a faint smear of light (not visible with the naked eye from my garden) M42 was visible in the sword of orion and I was able to pick out all three Messier clusters in Auriga (M36, M37 and M38 - I was surprised that they all appeared as tiny unresolved fuzzy stars at x8, M35 in Gemini was easy to find and appeared bigger, brighter and "looser".

Time to get "The Big Gun" out and train my SW200P on the sky - first target Jupiter which was stunningly bright and dominating the night sky! Viewed with both the 25mm and the 10mm and to be fair looked similar ith both - bigger in the 10mm EP but no more detail really visible - all four Galilean Moons visible and I was quite surprised at how far out from Jupiter Callisto appeared! Jupiter a bright creamy disk with the two dark equatorial bands visible.

Next up that showpiece of the Autumn sky M31 in Andromeda, to be honest - a bit underwhelming! Jut a small bright oval of nebulosity at both x40 and x100; presumably just the bright central core visible , M32 was visible as a fuzzy star super-imposed on the edge of M31, maybe I need to revisit from a darker site or with a LP filter?

Despite trying hard and using binoculars, the finderscope and the 220P with the 25mm EP I was unable to even catch a glimpse of M33 in Triangulum!

On to M42 in Orion, another gem of the winter sky...easy to locate and impressive even from my light polluted back garden! It was spectacular and bright enough to take x100 power without getting washed out! Compared to all the photo's i've seen it seemed much larger and more diffuse, shaped like two extended horns spreading away from the trapezium at the centre rather than the usual fan shaped images. Could see four stars of the central trapezium with the 10mm EP - the stars appearing to be in a "window" in the nebulosity.

Time to view my first double star - Sigma Orion; with the 10mm EP it apeared as a triple star and bright dazzling blue white primary and two fainter but still bright white companions (presumably A/B, D and E).

On to the attractive Open Cluster in Gemini I'd already glimpsed with Binoculars - M35 was easy to see as a shimmering glow in the finderscope in the 25mm EP it resolved itself into a sprawling loose cluster of faint individual stars...very impressive!

Lastly M1 The Crab Nebula; I was VERY surprised to ID M1 as a tiny diagonally oriented nebulosity just north of Zeta Tauris; no obvious detail or shape was apparent, but obviously longer along 1 axis than the other.

That was it for my first nights observing...you may have noticed I stuck to easy to find, famous objects...thats because i was finding it VERY difficult to find anything in the finderscope...and I also found it extremely hard to maneuver the dob mount to find objects passing near the zenith...definitely something to work on next time!