Two days of glorious weather up here in Waikanae has finally allowed me to get my new telescope up and running.
It’s still a bit of a faff to set it up – but once it is, it’s quite neat to just be able to select what you want to see, press a button, watch the telescope slew into position, and then look through it to see some fascinating thing out in space.
There’s a dearth of exciting events in our solar system just now – Mars was very close (relatively) back in October, and of course we had the great conjunction in December. So, instead I’ve had to look further out into the galaxy. The highlights last night were:
Of course, through my 8 inch telescope, and just looking instead of taking photos, they don’t look quite as impressive as these pictures. You can’t see any colors, for a start. But it’s still awesome. And considering the telescope including the mount and tripod cost about the same as any one of the laundry appliances I bought on Friday, I think it was money well spent.
In summary, 8 out of 10, would buy again.
Mind you, if I was going to rate our solar system, I’d only give it one star 😉