As the nights got longer in late November, I finally bought a telescope. I had one loaned to me briefly when I was doing GSCE Astronomy at school and was also able to use the Manor Road observatory when I was Leicester University.
My new ‘scope is similar to the one I had at school. It’s a Skywatcher Explorer 150 – a 6″ Newtonian Reflector on an equatorial mount.
I’ve had the ‘scope for about 6 weeks now and of course on most of evenings when I might have used it the sky was cloudy. But I’ve had a couple of decent clear evenings now.
Mars is well-placed at the moment and Venus was a pretty good evening object in December but you had to be quick or it disappeared behind the trees soon after the Sun had set.
I hope to look at the Moon next and some clusters.
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