Amazing what can be seen in just 30 minutes with a pair of binoculars. Tonight I just decided to pop outside with my binoculars and the little StarPocket scope I picked up for 30p last weekend, had fun identifying the stars with it, then scanned the stars with the binoculars.

Saw part of a shooting star in the binoculars as I was observing one of the large clusters near Cassiopia, picked out Pleiades with the naked eye - saw about six and a half stars, looked beautiful in the binoculars. Also saw the Andromeda Galaxy, it's looking pretty good now (after 11pm). I noticed a bright star peeking out between some trees, a look in the binoculars confirmed that it was Jupiter with it's moons, which looked like four or five tiny pin pricks in a black sheet of card held up to the light.

Time to dust off the scopes and think about some cool nights under the stars... the cool nights are here, time to start wrapping up warm and wear a hat.

Saw quite a bit of dew on my car as I came in tonight, just hope that my dew prevention measures will be up to it.

Next month I am likely to purchase the Equinox 80, which will replace my ST80 as a grab and go (ish), that should add plenty of interest for me to start off the dark skies season. I will likely buy a motor drive for the CG-4 too, probably dual axis as it doesn't cost much more than RA axis only.