Another Night Marathon

It was a little after midnight on a warm Thursday when I got about to set up my equipment to scan the eastern and northern skies.

I went up to the 4th floor of 3 Sea Avenue block to see if they were get vantage points for star gazing. To some extend they were. One was the balcony outside room 04 - 01 whichlooked out towards east and a partially convered north. The other took in a wider view of all points of the compass. The both also have one best thing in common - they are above the lights from the ground. I really contemplated hard as to whether I want to lug all my equipment up there. In the end, I figured, not yet, as I wasn't ready and not feeling cavalier in carrying that heavy computerised mount all the way through flights of stairs in semi-darkness. So, I had to content myself with viewing from the ground with those pesky street lights shining merrily away...

But that didn't stop me from getting some interesting shots with the Star Shoot. One is of the Maia Nebula also known as M45 or Pleiades. I did get an earlier shot of it before but this time round it was much better observable. It was a like a glob or cluster of stars that was just visible ot the naked eye and when it came under the eyepiece of the scope, they looked like diamonds in the sky!

I still couldn't get a glimpse of the Andromeda Galaxy because it was lost in the clouds and buildings that were in the vicinity and also it was already going down the western sky. Nonetheless, I managed to get the best part which was I stayed up for - Saturn. I managed to get a rough shot of it with the Start Shoot, but the view through the eyepiece of the 5mm Stratus WA lens was simply magnificent!

Not that bad for an extended night out. I finally got to bed just before 4 a.m. this morning... :-)