Scorpio (A)

Tonight I paid a visit to Amy's parents house to feed their dog. Mostly I was just wanting to take advantage of some dark sky on a clear night since it's been weeks since I got any decent nights for telescope time. I didn't have the guts to lug the big one, so I took my 70mm (basically one half of my binoculars) and tried it out. With a dark sky it's pretty awesome. I can see wanting a slightly nicer grab-n-go scope, but this one isn't bad at all.



I had a nice view to the South so tonight I spent some time getting to know Scorpio. It's actually a very cool looking constellation and has quite a few nice DSO's near it.



M4 - looked nice through the scope and then with binos was easy (keeping in mind that my binos are 70mm too - small scope, big binoculars).


Scorpious Jewel Box w/ binos was very pretty... two globs of stars on top of one another.



M7 (right) - looked like a 3d X made of stars almost, lots to look at and I spent quite a while looking at it.


M6 - not as nice as M7, but nice with binos


M8 - Lagoon Nebula - as nice as Orion's Nebula (nearly) :)


M20 - Easy to spot with lots of clusters around


And lastly... tonight I saw the Milky Way for the first time and recognized it - faint, but unmistakable :)


Lagoon Nebula (M8) below..