The sky tonight is cold and clear, and filled with stars, planets, and moons. I setup the scope out back just a while ago to get a glimpse of Venus especially, because Venus disappears quickly out of the sky being nearer the sun than most other objects.
Venus is pretty bright and makes a pretty good glare on my eyepiece. I assume that a filter of some sort would provide a better image. I didn't give the scope very much time to equalize its temperature to the cold outdoors, which was probably attributing to the bad image.
Jupiter was bright was always, and it's four Galilean moons were aligned perfectly. Two on each side of the planet, equally spaced. Sometimes you see less of them because one or more may be hidden behind Jupiter. Once I saw one of the moons casting a black shadow on the face of Jupiter. It was a small black dot that I could just barely make out in my 8" reflector.
The crescent moon looked neat, but I forgot to look at it through the scope. Oh well.
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