A satisfying short session.

[maw lod qan]

I went out at first to look for the two day old moon just as the sun was disappearing below the horizon.

I was a little early with the sky still quite bright. After just a few moments I managed to find Venus in my viewfinder even though it remained invisible to the naked eye. While looking at it through a 23mm eyepiece I found the moon nearby. It too was not yet visible in the light blue evening sky.

I've found Jupiter a few times with it still invisible in the sky, so I moved the telescope to search for it. As I looked, the conditions changed and both Venus and the Moon appeared out of nowhere.

There was a slight phase in Venus's appearance, probably 10 % missing.

Now Jupiter was showing easily so I turned to it. Three moons were visible along with some faint banding, mostly in the equatorial regions.i was quite surprised seeing how it being much lower effected the visibility.

Saturn was a bit higher, but the visibility still wasn't the greatest.

The grouping of Jupiter, Venus and the moon made a nice widefield image. Saturn was just a bit out of my cameras view to get them all together.

Deciding to change directions before going in I turned and found M31. The core stood out very good and the more my eyes adapted the more I could pick out its wispy outer area.

Taking my eye away for a moment, I looked almost directly overhead just in time to see a meteor. It easily traveled over 45 degrees across the sky from the West to the East, leaving a long sparkly trail in its wake.

Back to M31, I moved the scope around and found another faint fuzzy a little lower. My best guess is M33 after looking at some charts of the area.

With Sky Safari showing Neptune and Uranus near the zenith, I spent some time trying to pick out their color amongst the stars, but never did manage to find them.

All together, it was a pleasing short session. 

Hopefully, tomorrow will be fog free and I can view Mars.