Saturn, Alpha Centauri and the Moon

This past Saturday was the first clear wind still night in weeks. It was the perfect opportunity for some stargazing with the telescope.

The first object on the menu was Saturn. It was close to the Moon, so there was a bit of light pollution, but the overall view was the best so far. One could also see Titan very faintly.

Next up was the Moon. It was two days from full, so there was lots of light. This made the face of the Moon less desirable to look at, but I had lots of fun looking at the mountains and craters near the northeastern edge of the Moon. There are so many features on the Moon that one can spend many hours looking at it.

The last object on my list was Alpha Centauri. What makes it special is that it is a binary star. With 200x magnification I could see the second fainter star a small distance away from the larger brighter star. The separation was not very clear, it looked like there was a line between the two.

Looking at Alpha Centauri, I could see why the telescope was so cheap. However, even if it is not the best quality tool out there, it is still great. We can now see so many new things that would otherwise been impossible!

If you would also like to see nice astronomy pictures, have a look at NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. Theirs is of course much better :)