My first night observing

[Spier24]

Tonight was the big night. My first outing with a telescope! I planned to observe originally from about 7-8pm although unforseen cloudy skies delayed my outing in the back garden until 12am! 

When I finally got out I had have my first crack at doing the two star alignment. After a few minutes of nervously trying to pick out an easy start to get to I went with Regulus. It was my first time viewing a star in a telescope and I don't think I'll ever forget it. I then selected arcturus as my second star, the scope slewed over to it and it was pretty much bang on in the middle of the eye piece. 

 

Now it was on to picking my first target. Obviously I had to scrap my original plan do I decided to fire up sky Safari on my phone and see what was good at the time. I decided to go for the M67 open cluster, I didn't want to start with something too tricky and thought it seemed like an interesting target. It was actually better than I expected! Quite a pretty looking thing to observe as it showed up well in my 23mm eyepiece. 

Next it was over to the beehive cluster, it was only target part of my original plan that was still observable at the time. I can see why it's called the beehive now due to its shape, I think M67 has a bit more about it but the beehive was still nice to see.

 

After that I decided to be a little more ambitious and try to go for a galaxy. A target that was suggested to me on the synscan DSO tour was the M94 spiral galaxy near Ursa major. Despite my Bortle 7 skies and not having a large 8 inch + dob. I was still able to make our the core of the galaxy after relaxing my eye and having a look for 5 minutes. It appeared as a faint smudge between two stars. One star quite close to the south and another star slightly further away to the north.

I then decided to finish off my nights observation with a globular cluster and decided to go for the great Hercules cluster. I was pleasantly surprised with what I saw, a neat tight fuzzy grey ball in the center of the eyepiece.  

Im very pleased with my first experience actually quite pleasantly surprised with what I can see even in the urban skies here. 

I used an Orion Starseeker 130mm reflector.

 

Targets that I tried to observe but failed to see:

- M101 

-M51 

[Pixies]

M101 is very faint, don't worry. M51 is a lot easier to see, but depends on your conditions, of course. You will probably need to use averted vision.

Try M81 and M82. You should be able to get both in the same view. They are nice and bright, although not quite as concentrated as M94

[Spier24]

7 hours ago, Pixies said:

M101 is very faint, don't worry. M51 is a lot easier to see, but depends on your conditions, of course. You will probably need to use averted vision.

Try M81 and M82. You should be able to get both in the same view. They are nice and bright, although not quite as concentrated as M94

I think I may have tried to view M81 without success but I will try again. I was very pleased with my view of M94 though.