A triumphant return!

So after waaaaaaay too long, I was finally able to take out my telescope last night! The nights are getting darker again, and it was a fantastically clear night. I had just heard the news about Neil Armstrong passing away and decided to go take a look at the moon. It was beautiful out, perfectly clear and dark. I watched the moon go down through my scope, passing behind a tree before disappearing from view. It was very cool to actually see movement, it reminds you just how dynamic the universe really is! I snapped a quick photo as the moon was setting...

(Not great, but it set really really quickly!)

Once the moon had set, I decided to take a bash at finding the Andromeda Galaxy for the first time. There's far too much light pollution in my garden to see it with the naked eye, and the battery in my finder scope is dead, but it was just too nice to go inside! After a few mins of faffing around with the scope, and looking from the sky to Stellarium and back again, I finally found it! And it was gorgeous! In my scope, it wasn't much more than a fuzzy patch, but using averted vision I could see it pretty well. And because I'm a dork, I said out loud to myself 'It's coming right for us! Ahh!' It was pretty exciting! 

(I even managed to capture Andromeda in a pic!)

And as it got later, and the sky got darker, and my night vision kicked in properly, I realised that the Milky Way was almost visible overhead! I aimed my camera up and took a ton of photos with the aim of stacking them, but I haven't quite figured out the software, so this is just a single image, with as much detail pulled out of it using PS Elements as possible! 

(You can sort of see the Milky Way!!!!!!)

So all in all, a great return to astronomy. 

Thank you Neil Armstrong, for reminding not only me, but thousands of people around the world to look up.