Planets and a few DSO'S

[Ccolvin968]

I got out this last Saturday, June 20th for the first time since my daughter was born. (5 months.) Right away I observed Venus, it appeared about 40% illuminated. After a while, I hopped over to the Moon. There was gorgeous detail right along the termination. I need a good map of the moon to better describe what I was looking at. After that I took another short hop over to Jupiter. All four of the largest moons were visible. I could make out the cloud bands if I used averted vision. I only have a 5 inch scope and no filters. Hopefully after my eyepiece and filter kit gets here it'll make a bit of a difference. I also bumped into M4 which only appeared as a faint smudge. I also saw the Ring Nebula for the first time. It was faint, and I could make out the tiniest amount of detail. It mostly looked like an out of focus star. I spent some time on Arcturus and Algieba. I wasn't able to split Algieba into two stars. Overall, it was a great night. Can't wait to get out again! Thanks for reading! :-)

[xtreemchaos]

great report mate,you had a good night.thanks for sharing..charl.

[John]

Nice report !

I've found the Virtual Moon Atlas quite useful, and it's a free download:

http://www.ap-i.net/avl/en/start

[Ccolvin968]

Thanks John!

[Ccolvin968]

Something I forgot to add. I'm pretty sure I saw a couple of Saturn's moons. Not sure if it was wishful thinking though a 5in. Scope... Opinions?

[Piero]

Nice report!  

You might have seen Rhea. If you remember the position w.r.t. the planet, you could check this out with this web application by Sky & Telescope:

http://www.wwu.edu/skywise/saturn.html

Piero