Short first light with a Celestron Skymaster 15x70

[CreepyOlmos]

Frak yes, first light with these great binoculars I got a couple of days ago!

To set the stage, I live in Ireland, so it's really cloudy most of the time, and quite a lot of light pollution, but luckily my flat is on the 4th floor, and I have a nice balcony.

22h: Oh damn it, frakking clouds, just get the hell out of my sky!

23h: Are you kidding me? You damn stupid country! I can't even see the moon!

00h00: Come on! For the love of... Oh wait, where are the clouds?

So I set up everything rapidly, deploy my cheap tripod, put the 15x70, prepare my computer with Stellarium and some other paper maps.

And here come the first question: "Where should I start?"

> The moon of course, almost full! "Okay so, the moon, easy to spot, it should be here, wait for it... HOLY Sh!&'. Mind blowing! So much details, craters! I couldn't look anywhere else, I was like hypnotised!

"Next target? Hm, what's this bright star just near the moon? let's take a look... Hey that's weird, that doesn't look like a star, I should check on the map... What the... is that frakking SATURN? :°" Can't believe I could saw it with binocular! I could definitely saw the shape of the ring.

"Okay, great, well, let's try the Leo Triplet... damn, I can't find M66, maybe too much LP or because of the almost-full moon?"

"Let's head to the Gemini twins, there should be a cluster somewhere near their feets... nothing here... ho, there's a lot of stars here, wait I remember this pattern, oh yeah, M35!, hard to believe there're so much stars we can't see with naked eyes!".

"What the, I can see something moving, definitely not a bird or a plane, could that be a sattelite?!"

"So, if I go far more on the right, before Auriga, I should get... oh, is that M37? hard to tell, damn LP. And even further on the right... wow, hello M36, or is that M38? Hm, I definitly need some practice! :p"

I have underestimate the effect of the LP I have around, but still, I can't wait the next free-cloud night to try to find those clusters! Any tips to differentiate these clusters by the way? ^^'.

[pilot_ngb]

Hi

Nice report.

I was out last night with my 15x70 looking at Saturn too. Despite the LP, I had a clear view of the rings. I recon I had up to mag 5.0 around the southern halve of the sky with the LP. I could make out HR4837 and 38 Vir but that was about it.

Preying for another clear night tonight. Going to try M44 this evening.

[4lefts]

Cool. Wait 'till the moon's less full, then it's the business.

[pilot_ngb]

You mean wait for a cloudless and moonless night. That's the challenge!

[CreepyOlmos]

So the moon do mess up with Deep sky object around? I was wondering that. That's reassuring, maybe the LP isn't that disturbing after all.