A little rusty start.

Tonight was the first time that I’ve pulled out my telescope from the garage and used it since May 2020. I don’t have any exact reason why I haven’t been out using my scope for over a year. Partly has been bad weather here in Maine. Weekends are mostly when I do any stargazing. So that limits when I can see, especially if there is any bad weather on those days.

Another reason I guess has been not feeling the passion for astronomy due to COVID-19 shutting down our usual star parties that the club organizes. I very much prefer to be with company when viewing the stars. You can talk about and show off what you’ve found and see in the eyepiece.

That said, tonight was good to get back in the saddle so to speak. I setup my 10″ Apertura dobsonian telescope on the driveway. Checked collimation; only slightly off and easily corrected. I thought the first object I ought to look at would be M57 Ring Nebula. One of my favorite DSOs. But I could not find it after hunting for 20 minutes.

Finally I took out my phone, opened Mobile Observatory app up, and bad it point my phone to M57. Turns out I was looking below Arcturus. Doh! Moved scope to Vega and down to bottom stars of Lyra. Boom bagged it.

Next I looked at M13 Great Globular clusters. Looked awesome with my 12.5mm Morpheus eyepiece. Like a pile of sparkling sand.

Checked out Dumbbell Nebula next, which I usually have a hard time finding but easily found it tonight. Looked at Andromeda Galaxy, and Jupiter with 3 Galilean moons and two cloud bands. A real treat. Saturn was behind trees so I couldn’t see it easily.

Wrapped up the night with some wide field astrophotography shots.