Star Hopper.

Now I have de-frosted, I thought I would type up my observations for tonight (would have more but the clouds arrived right on cue)

I started setting up about a quarter of an hour before sunset, at 1545, ensuring that the two tripods were as accurately aligned as possible to north, and that they were levelled, before mounting the OTAs in their respective mounts. Next time, I'll wait until I have properly aligned the Skywatcher to the CNP before mounting it, as I did not acieve a proper alignment this night due to cold fingers and frustration, need to get more practice at polar aligning.

I started off using the Bresser Skylux, as the Skywatcher had a chicken coop in the way, to look as Venus then Jupiter. Starting with the finder scope, I quickly centered the very bright disk, and at low power the wobble was barely noticeable, and the angling of the alt az mount (like a wedge) makes tracking much easier. After getting Venus centered at low power I went straight to a 4mm ep and was delighted to see a full creamy disc, with no CA that I could see, the only distortion I believe was due to atmospherics as Venus was close to the horizon, and this was less than an hour after sunset (not even any bright stars were visible) already at 175x magnification I put in a 2x barlow, and got a larger disc, with what I saw to be a small darker spot on the top right quarter of Venus.

After going back to a low power ep I re-centered on Jupiter with the finder, then the telescope itself. I swapped to the 10mm ep and made out the globe of Jupiter and 3 of its moons and could make out two tones of banding on the globe of Jupiter at various latitudes.

The only other object I looked at with the Bresser were the Pleiades, I was so impresed with them that I dragged my father and little brother to take a look, I preffered the view through the Bresser to the Skywatcher as I could fit the cluster in the FOV, I can only describe it as diamonds scattered over velvet, absolutely beautiful.

With the Skywatcher I only got to look at the Pleiades and the Orion Nebula.

The Pleiades were much better resolved, but due to a lack of any eps less than 25mm I could not get the entire cluster in my FOV (or I'm just not doing it right) although it was much more clear and more starts were visible, once again taking my breath away (starting to think that ET has big black eyes to take in the night sky, but thats just me) it took some getting used to moving the open end to follow everything as it is upside down and backwards, especially when using the finderscope, as it is not optically corrected as it is on the Bresser, although the Bresser's finder has terrible CA.

After getting frustrated at finding nothing with the Skywatcher (as I am new at this, and really don't know what I'm looking at still, already planned some good, easy to find DSOs for next time though) I noticed that Orion had risen, and centered the finder on his sword. With the 20mm ep I could make out some faint green nebulosity, but lost this at higher magnification, plausibly due to poor centering, siderial motion, oh, and the light pollution around my area.

After looking at Orion's shiney bits the clouds came thick and fast, and even now are blotting out the sky, so I packed up for the night.

All in all a fantastic nights viewing, really enjoyed the experience, look forward to getting more experienced with the Skywatcher and getting a look at things like the Helix nebula, Andromeda Galaxy, and many more DSOs (no I havent forgotten about binary stars) And I'm thrilled with my Lidlscope.