I got my telescope one lunchtime, on a break from work. The shop was about 15 minutes up the road from the office and I’d spent ages doing all the research in magazines and on Stargazer’s Lounge.

The staff were very helpful and although I knew what I wanted – a nice Skywatcher Skymax 127 Mak Cat f/11.8 Goto Alt Az – it was good to go through the options and confirm I’d made the right choice. At home, everything fitted together easily and suddenly, there was a proper telescope sitting in my living room.

I read (and re-read and re-read again) the instruction book so I had a good idea how to align it. I peered into the top and bottom and quickly figured out which end to look through. I headed out to the garden and my chosen observing platform (the patio)and looked up to try and identify a decent star to start the alignment with and… no stars! They must have seen me coming! I was gutted. For the rest of the evening, I kept darting out every so often to see if they’d sneaked back but no, there was a light orange covering of cloud that kept them out of sight.

The following night was a lot better. I was out about 8pm and aligned by about 8.10pm. And re-aligned by about 8.20 as I’d missed Polaris (my ‘second star’) and everything was out.

Then I had to decide what to look at? I quickly drew up a short-list in my head – Orion Nebula, Pleiades, Mars and Saturn. I knew I’d have to wait for Saturn to show up over my house so I headed for the Orion Nebula first. To be perfectly honest, I was a little disappointed by it. I knew I wasn’t going to see the bright, colourful sight often seen in books but I did expect more than a faint fuzzy patch. In fact, at first I thought there was misting on the eyepiece and cleaned it. Then I thought I was looking in the wrong direction. But then with some averted vision, I realised this was it! I scanned along the sword and then the belt before selecting the Pleiades as my next target.

With the 25mm eyepiece I could just about fit in the 7 main stars and after a moment I could make out the bluish nebulosity around them. The Pleiades are a favourite of mine as they were one of the first things I learnt to find when using binoculars as a child. They hadn’t lost any of their magic. I must have spent ages just feasting on them. I swapped eyepieces between the 10 and 25mm ones that came with the telescope. Eventually, I tore myself away and headed for my next target.

I was glad of the Goto mount as I wasn’t familiar with the night sky. My knowledge of celestial navigation is limited to Orion, Ursa Minor and Major, Casseopia, Polaris and the Pleiades. But by using the Goto, I was able to identify Castor and Pollux (and so Gemini) and from them and Orion, spot Sirius, Procyon and Aldebaran (am I the only one who wants to call Aldebaran ‘Alderaan’ from Star Wars?) What a great teaching tool.

At this point, I was joined by a little black and white cat, who started to brush along my legs. She’s a frequent visitor to my garden and very friendly. She seemed happy to have someone out at night to keep her company.

Mars was a beautiful sight with the 25mm eyepiece. Clearly not a star, it had a disc and a lovely pinkish red hue. Using the 10mm, I had a recognisable planet (and on a subsequent observation, I started to make out the polar ice cap and a faint mark in the middle of the disc).

I’d spent far longer than I realised staring through the eyepieces and Saturn had appeared over the house, so off the Goto slewed and the beep from the handset told me I was there. Using the 25mm I could clearly see a little disc with ears. A few adjustments centred the planet and brought it into sharp focus and I was looking at a tiny version of all those photos I’d seen as a child of the ringed planet. It was magical. At first it felt unreal, too. Almost too perfect.

My head was full of a sense of scale, viewing something 1.3 billion miles away. After a few minutes taking all of this in, I swapped to the 10mm eyepiece and was rewarded with a bigger version of the ringed planet with four moons on a similar plane to the rings. Even more magical, if that is possible.

I was hooked. I think the cat was, too.