A shout-out to Joanne!

Hi Jo!

So tonight, after nearly 2 weeks of clouds, the sky finally cleared!

And just in time too, cos my lovely lovely friend Joanne was visiting and I really wanted to show her my telescope. (There's really no way to say that without it sounding sexy...). When she arrived to the house, it was still cloudy, but by the time it had gotten dark, around 10.30 pm, it was completely clear!

(This is a penguin that Jo sent me!)

I headed out and set up the scope, and we started star-gazing. I wanted to save Saturn for last, seeing as it's so cool, so I pointed at Venus first. It's looking pretty lovely at the moment, with the crescent clearly visible. And Jo loved it. It's now her favourite planet. I think everyone should have a favourite planet... mine's Jupiter. For several reasons that I'll most likely go into on a later date...

So we spent a while looking at Venus, while I pointed out constellations and stars. I then decided to take a bash at finding M81 and M82, as they're right overhead. I didn't want to spend too long at it, cos that's not fun for anyone else, so after about 5 minutes of looking around, I moved on.

(Stellarium screenshot of Jo's favourite planet and constellation!)

To Saturn! The main event! I lined it up in the 10mm, focused and handed the scope over to Jo. There was a few seconds of silence, and then 'Wow.' Which is really the only appropriate reaction to Saturn. The atmosphere wasn't as steady as it could have been, but the view was as spectacular as it always is. We could make out Titan just above Saturn too. It was lovely. And I think Jo was pretty impressed!

We moved on to Mars next, though it's super tiny even in the 10mm eyepiece. It's distinctly red though, which is pretty cool. And I'm happy to gaze at Mars with the naked eye. Every time I see it, I just think of the fact that we have robots wandering around up there, and I'm happy.

Joanne had to leave then, so I swung quickly back around to Saturn for one last look. It's a shame the moon and the Orion nebula weren't up, but there'll be time for that when she's next visiting. And I *just* realised I never offered Jo a cup of tea... bad friend. But there'll be time for that when she's next visiting... (Love you Jo, I'm glad you're the only person who reads this!)

After Jo left, I decided to have one more go at M81 and M82 before putting everything away. I swung the scope around, aimed at the general area, glanced through the eyepiece, and lo and behold there they were! Very very faint, but very very beautiful. And of course they would be faint, they're about 12 million light years away! Most distant object so far! They would be wonderful at a proper dark sky site...

(Once again, this is not how they looked in my scope! Source)

So all in all, a very fun and successful night! I think showing Saturn to other people is my new favourite thing to do!