10/5- Venus, Mars, and Sigma Leo

[Hayduke27]

I made it out of the house at 5am this morning to get up to my viewing site and catch Venus and Mars by Leo.  I was rewarded with a wonderful sight in the eyepiece!  About 30 minutes after I got set up (I killed some time by spotting the Eskimo Nebula for my first time, surprising considering the amount of moonlight!), the planets rose above the horizon and viewing was nice and clear.  I was viewing with a 32mm Plossl, which just barely fit all three objects in the eyepiece. I made a quick sketch of the 3 main object along with a couple of background stars that were apparent.

I also snapped a shot through the EP using my phone.  It's very low quality and certainly not astrophotography as its finest, but I took a picture through my scope and managed to capture all three objects! (You'll notice it's flipped horizontally, as it is the actual view from the EP.  The sketch above was flipped by me to represent the actual alignment)

 

This is just my second sketch and it was my first time editing a sketch with a computer program (I used GIMP).  I'm still very new to all of this, but I am happy that I have some images to remember this morning with!  Thanks for allowing me to share, and I hope you enjoy the pics!

[N3ptune]

Very nice, you woke up during the night to look at Venus and Mars, that's great and i am happy for you. 

I can't do it.. it's too hard for me

I like GIMP it's so good to do all my little modifications and it's open source just like Stellarium, GIMP is a very nice program.

The Eskimo for me is always a hard target to find but it's a pleasure once it's centered into the eyepiece! great target.

[Mr niall]

Nice report - hats off to you for getting up so early. I considered it... for a few seconds.