Giddy with excitement

Finally got the knack of aligning the telescope. That's a bonus.

Also discovered, after being put in touch with a helpful chap by another helpful chap (ta MV) that my particular telescope, being a reflector, is going to have issues with astrophotography.

Hey ho - going to have to spend a bit more of my Christmas money then. But, adopting the 'life is too short' approach, that's all fine and dandy by me, because I am determined to get some decent shots of things.

Anyway. Tonight through my telescope I saw the object labelled M43, which is a nebula in the Orion constellation, also known as De Mairan's Nebula. Get me. I'm learning new things.

Once I'd got the knack of the scope, I was having a whale of a time finding things and running in and telling the boys, who were more interested in Doctor Who. James asked me if I was coming in to watch and my terse response was "No, I'm looking at REAL stars".

Whilst outside for an hour, the camera was shooting away focussed on Polaris. Sadly, despite 200 shots, the bloomin' cloud caused most of them to be rendered useless for a star trail shot.

So instead you will have to make do with this one.

Quick lesson to show you what I have learned:

The group of 6 stars towards the top left, with a bright white star at the top right of it is the constellation "Auriga". The bright white star is Capella.

Across to the right, and slightly lower is the cluster known as Pleiades.

Upwards from the bottom left of Orion's Belt, and slightly to the left, the red/orange star is Betelgeuse (800 times the diameter of the sun and 40000 times brighter. 420 light years away)

If you follow a line upwards from the top right star of Orion's belt, midway between it and Pleiades, you will find an orangey (looks white-ish on here) star called Aldebaran, which is the eye of the constellation of Taurus.

I am turning into an uber geek.

I make no apologies for it.

Off to spend money so that I can do what I really want to do and take photos of nebulae.