As a kid I was always very fascinated by astronomical objects. I vividly remember the first time I observed the Andromeda Galaxy in a pair of binoculars. I think I was around 14, and I had tried to find it several times before. I did not really know what it would look like in binoculars, and I remember freezing my hands off to keep it in view once I found it. Even if it was just a blurry blob it was amazing.
Fast forward 20 years, and I now have the knowledge, time and money to buy and use a telescope. I recently bought a 10 inch Dobsonian. I am still learning to to use it well, but it has so far been worth every NOK spent.
Last night was my first observing session with the telescope under not extremely badly light polluted skies. These are the objects I have observed so far.
M35 and NGC 2158 (Open cluster in Gemini)
M35 is huge, and looks great on low magnification. It was also not very hard to find by following the stars in Gemini. It would be useful with an even lower magnification eyepiece to observe this next time.
M37(Open cluster in Auriga)
Since it is far away from the closest clearly visible star, it was a bit hard to find even though it showed up pretty clear in the finderscope once I was in the right region.
M42 (Orion Nebula)
This is so far the only nebula I have been able to observe from the city. Sadly Orion was not visible when I observed in the less light polluted location. I have not yet tried filters for contrast, but M42 is still very visible, and it looks great. Looking forward to observe this with filters and less light pollution.
M13 (Hercules globular cluster)
M13 gave M42 a run for its money. M13 was easy to find (shows up clearly in the finder scope), and at low magnification it looked great. Increasing the magnification made it awesome. Suddenly thousands of starts exploded into view.
M65 and M66, part of the Leo Triplet
With the light pollution at the time, M65 and M66 were visible but with little detail. They were not visible in the finder scope, and I just randomly found them scanning from the stars in Leo. They pretty much both looked like Andromeda in binoculars. I am hoping to see some more structure next time.
I also observed some galaxy in Virgo, but I have no clue which. It seems the area is filled with galaxies, and I found one just scanning around. Pretty neat.
