The first target for the evening was brilliant Venus setting in the western sky, its magnitude (Mag) was around -4.5 at this time, by now it had nearly gone to half phase. While we were looking at Venus, Hilary turned up and set her telescope next to me. Next target was Neptune, this is an object I have trouble finding even with GOTO gear (none of the planets are right in the centre of the eye piece but within the finderscope, I normally have to adjust them manually to centre them), I tried various stars within the view of the finderscope but to no luck, so we went on to the next target which was Uranus. The 7th planet from the Sun had a pale green look about it, no other details to show, this planet is just about visible with the naked eye coming in at Mag 5.7.
Back to the west again as I had forgot Saturn! The rings are nearly flat now but I could make out the moon Titan out to the east of the planet. Titan is the second largest moon within the solar system. Shining brightly (around mag -2.6) high in the southern sky is Jupiter, the king of the planets. We could make out the two main weather belts clearly, to the east of Jupiter was the moon’s Io, Europa and a long way out Calisto, to the west and close (by line of sight) to Jupiter was Ganymede (the largest moon in the solar system and larger than the planet Mercury). The Great Red Spot was on view but neither Damian nor I found it. By now Hilary had decided to call it for an evening as she was getting cold and due up very early the following morning.
Mars had now cleared the hedges out to the east, so we had a look at the red planet. We could make out some markings on the surface of Mars, something I have not seen in many years, sky conditions must be good? With the planets out of the way, it was time to turn to some deep sky objects. I suggested Messier (M) 81 to start with, this spiral galaxy had a bright core but was a fuzzy blob (FB) to look at. Not far away is M 82 (the Cigar galaxy), an irregular galaxy linked to M 81. This also had a bright core and a FB to look at. Both of these galaxies are in the constellation of Ursa Major. The brightest star in the night sky is Sirius (Mag -1.46) in the constellation of Canis Major, about 4 ° below this star is the open cluster of M 41, and this is a large but sparse cluster to look at.