Little Update

I did some stargazing on this crisp night in Vandalia.  Lot's of stars and a few planets were out.

The first object I looked at was Jupiter and it's moons.  Three of the 4 moons were clearly visible while the fourth was hiding on the backside of Jupe.  Jupiter in my scope shows a fair amount of detail.  On the clearest nights the different atmospheric bands show up pretty distinctly.  I have also seen one of the moons cast it's shadow upon Jupiter.  At first I thought it a piece of dirt on the eyepiece, but then realized it was a shadow.  I've only seen this happen once and it was truely kickass.
The 4 easily seen moons of Jupiter are called the Galilean moons, named after their discoverer Galileo Galilei.  They are:  IO, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

The next object I searched out was Orion.  More specifically the Orion Nebula, located in the constellation Orion The Hunter.  Anyone can find the constellation Orion with ease, and the nebula itself is pretty easy also.  It can be located with the naked eye most of the time.  I would like to snap a pic of the nebula, but I need to hookup with my friend Doug, the DSLR owner.

I tried once again to find M1, the Crab Nebula.  Epic fail.  Kind of got too cold and tired.  I suck.  Plus it's sort of hard to find with my 8" scope.

I found a good amount of the Messier objects this past summer, but not all of them.  I need to make a list of which ones I've seen now.  Maybe later.

Till next time...