Astronomy Diary Jan 31st 19:45 to 21:45

A good cloudless night so tonight was an experiment get the scope out and try the new Google Sky App on the Android Phone.  Temp was at freezing and I was surprised how well my new Smartphone did in the cold.  Jupiter looked great tonight and you could clearly see the bands of clouds that make up this gas giant.

(All photos in this Blog section courtesy of NASA public domain)

The Google Sky app is fantastic and really supports a manual Dobsonian to find things almost like a go to scope.  So armed with the Google Sky App it was quite simple to align the scope on objects that were hard to find under light polluted skies. Andromeda  was disappointing but The Orion Nebulae was the best I have seen it through the scope this is by far my favourite spot.  With the sky you can clearly see the clouds that make up the nebula.

Well its not as stunning as this shot of the Nebula. Taken by Hubble in 2006.  But for an 8 inch Dobsonian it is a great thing to show the curious passer by to get that "Wow" factor.

Then it was on to M45 the Pleiades star cluster. Easy to see with the eye and the scope is a bit too big to capture all the stars nevertheless a nice site to round off an evenings viewing.  Then it was pack the scope up and head in doors for tea and warm up and update this Blog.  Until next time Clear Skies!