Reach for the sky

Our night out on Friday involved driving to a remote farmer's field down a heavily rutted track, and standing in the field in the dark on a bitterly cold night.  Of course, there was rather more to it than that.  We have joined the North Norfolk Astronomical Society; it's more for W than for me but as family membership was only an extra £4 it was silly not to.  We had a good evening; the members were very welcoming and conditions couldn't have been better as the sky was completely clear of cloud.  The Society has a couple of large telescopes and we managed to look at a few areas of the sky through one of them; amazing how much you could see!  The one we used is around 100 years old and information and pictures from it were used by NASA in planning the first moon landings.

Which brings me to this.  Around 15 years ago this was a bit of an impulse purchase.  I think I looked at the moon through it once and then it became a rather expensive decoration.  Where we live now is in a 'dark skies' area (the builders weren't allowed to put in any street lighting to preserve the darkness) so once we get a clear night again we will have a look and see what we can see with it.  I suspect, however, that we will buy a more modern one; apparently some now come with mounts for a DSLR and 'tracking'; you can lock on to an area of the sky and the telescope will move with it.  One man on Friday showed us an amazing photo he had taken through his telescope using a 25 minute exposure.