Observation log

Yesterday, by the time I came back home, the weather was clear which is quite incredible itself, since it's been raining for the last week. Suddenly the clouds went away and a perfectly clear sky appeared, with an almost-full moon. We watched some stuff, then I saw Venus from the window (this is about 11pm). I set up the scope in the middle of the room but both Venus and Saturn didn't look that good. Having two people in the house is quite useful, we just took the kit outside and set it up very quickly.

Then we had a good look at Venus, unfortunately it appears to be in its gibbous phase so it wasn't much fun to look at. We peered at Saturn, which was nice but the conditions were not great. We could not see any of the gaps in the rings.

We looked at the Ring Nebula, which was great! I could not believe how easily I found it, considering that in the past many times I failed to locate it. It's just unbeliveable. Then we looked at Epsilon Lyrae and Deneb. I could not split the double-double, which really pissed me off. Wee peered at Castor and Pollux for fun.

What next, we looked at Mira in Ursa Major, which is not that spectacular on the scope.

Then we looked at the moon for a while using the moon filter, which really helps. Unfortunately there weren't a lot of craters to look at, since it was almost full moon.

Still, it was fun. By the time we packed up and went back upstairs, it was about 1am.
Missed opportunities: Andromeda Galaxy (I couldn't see it at all, I couldn't see Andromeda full stop, the light conditions were not great), double cluster (too low), all sorts of Messiers including Prasepae (which I completely forgot about). We could have done better but anyway, at least we used a very rare opportunity.

Todo list: maintenance on the EQ Mount, it's unbeliveably wobbly, you can't use the focus because it's so rigid and the telescope moves too easily, if not wobbles so bad, you can't even focus. Anyway, that can be done during any rainy evening... Heh, I'm not short of those lately.