A really good astro session last night, learning to find my way around with the telescope. Very clear, dark sky, one of the best I can remember.

I let the scope cool while I took advantage of the good seeing to learn the whole shape of Pisces - up to now I'd only been able to make out the head (under the square of Pegasus) but this time I could make out both fish.

The joined tails of the fish pointed neatly to the tail of Cetus, which I'd never grasped the outline of before. It does look just like a whale, with the body in the west and the raised tail in the east just next to Taurus. Gamma (where the fluke joins the tail) was a beautiful golden yellow in binoculars.

I wanted an easy start with the scope so I turned it on the Pleiades, to get a feel for how much sky the 25mm eyepiece shows me (80x magnification). Not enough for the whole asterism, is the answer.

Then I trained it on the bottom bar of Lyra to scan for the Ring Nebula, which I found without needing the setting circles. It's easy to find, being almost exactly on the line from beta to gamma. If anything it looked better in the 25mm, the 9mm eyepiece (225x) made it too dim to appreciate.

From there it was a short traverse to Albireo, my first attempt at separating a double. At first I mistook alpha Vulpeculae for it because I underestimated how bright Albireo would look in the finder. Once that was cleared up I had a fine view of the yellow and blue components, which again were more impressive in the 25mm.

As I was freezing cold by now I decided to finish with a look at Jupiter, where I was rewarded with Europa and Io very close either side of the planet. I also kept almost seeing a dark dot on the trailing side of Jupiter, which I later realised from the Jupiter's Moons applet was Ganymede's shadow.

I was pleased with this session, I got a lot of practice with the finder and the fine controls, and got a proper feel for the 25mm EP. It showed me that use of the setting circles is not needed for objects which you'd trust yourself to find with binoculars.