So the sun had shone in the afternoon, the clouds were scudding across the sky and by the time i got home there were these twinkling things in the sky!

so it was windy and clouds, but there were breaks in those clouds and i had had enough of waiting! so out came the scope, set up in the front garden as I wanted to quickly move it undercover if started raining, didnt bother with aligning the scope, but pointed it straight at Jupiter, first thing to please me was that the red dot finder was perfectly aligned with the scope - so i can do things correctly! and wow, I only had the low power EP - hey I am using jargon already! - but I swear I could see 5 moons at least, will have to check the star charts to see what is a moon and what is a star. but best of all I was able to see the rings on jupiter. I then just had time before the weather closed in to have a quick look at the Orion nebula, again found it with the red dot, no problem, and another wow!!

Why oh why had i not done this before!

OK lessons learnt,

make sure i take everything outside with me

ensure i have a map book, I think turn left at Orion is going to be very useful

do a bit of homework and plan what i am going to see, so that i can recognise what i am looking at

Finally, this go-to computer, initially, i was dead against getting a scope with it on, but i am now pleased. It is not the be all and end all, it just gets you to where you want to go, not giving you a picture and telling you what you are looking at. I need to learn the night sky, and even when i have dialled the object i want to see into the go-to, I will naturally want to know where in the sky i am in and what is near - perhaps the binos will come in handy afterall,

well back to work