Night Sky Astronomy

Finally the skies cleared and I was able to use my new binoculars for the first time.  It also coincided with the moon coming into range outside of our back door, so it was excellent timing.

The view that greeted me was excellent.  The moon was crisp and bright and was magnified enough to almost fill the whole viewing area.  As the binoculars only have a magnification of 10, I wasn’t really expecting much more, but the view was a lot better than what I had with my other pair.

As Jupiter was still shining brightly in the sky, I decided to give looking at it a go as well.  Jupiter is much much farther away,  so I didn’t think for one minute that I would see anything bar a small ball of light in the sky.  And I didn’t.  But to my surprise, I could just about make out two bright dots slightly to the right of the planet, which I assumed to be two of Jupiter’s moons.  So if any one can clarify that the two dots were the moons, please leave a comment on this post, as I would very much like to know. 😉

So all in all, I was very pleased with the new binoculars, and for £15 it was a very good buy.

Time: 19:30 – 19:45, Longitude: 50.435423, Latitude: -4.093217, Viewing: North East