Well I just started this 'hobby' and it may turn out to be big hobby. My daughter and I started looking at the skies about a month ago. I went out last night after she went to bed around 11:00pm ( she was down at 8:30). It was by far the clearest sky I have been out under. I started out by looking for and even finding Cassiopeia. It was a great big W in the northern Sky just to the east and down a litle from Polaris. The distance from Polaris to the Big Dipper is about the same. After looking around the Queen for a little while I decided to look at Mars. After locating Mars I began to search out Scorpius, wow is it bigger than what I thought. I sketched out what I thought was the constellation only to find that i had only seen a about half of it. I have been very interested in Lyra and especially Vega the brightest star straight up in the sky. I have found the double star, but not sure if that is the double-double that is spoken of, also found Alberio (sp) another double. While I was looking at this area of the sky a meteor raced by my lens. This morning I woke around 6:00 and went outside to see what the planets Venus, Saturn and Jupiter looked like at the time.

WOWZERS... it was beautiful, Venus beaming the brightest of the three followed by Jupiter and then with the binoculars Saturn could just be made out to the south of Jupiter. All three were on a blue sky with only a wisp of clouds under Venus. Descriptions can't do it justice you just have to see it to beleive it.

I was using a 7X50 set of binoculars to see this,
and in town so light pollution was a little bit of an issue.

My daughter and I are planning on going out Saturday morning at about 5:00 to see the periedes (sp) and the other sights of the morning.


Hopefully I will something to post on Monday.
Thom

• Did you buy a telescope yet - bobsal - August 9, 2001 - 20:06 UTC
  • Daughter got a Tasco - bolintx - August 9, 2001 - 21:16 UTC