After an evening out I spotted a very bright object to the South fairly low in the sky, and thought it could be Jupiter or Venus (or an aircraft on aproach to the local airport).

So, after getting home managed to get out with the opticron to take a look. My southern aspect is not the best being obscured by some large trees but I did manage to get a look.

Jupiter is looking awesome, all 4 Gallilean moons were on display, 3 to the left and 1 to the right. Even through the small aperture of the Opticron at 40x mag I could make out two cloud belts quite clearly. The view was only spoilt by atmospheric distortion and was otherwise stunning.

Can't wait now to get some serious observing sessions in, the kitchen is finished and the workshop almost compltete, I just need to put down some decking and build a small shed for an observatory.

Earlier in the year I put a few photos onto a free photo album site www.fotothing.com/mitch62 and I included a few astropics, namely the moon, vega and M42. The moon shot and vega were quite popular and only last week I was contacted by two US based astro organisations who want to use the image of Vega!

later,
Mitch.