2011-11-22 Sight Report, Ava’s first light!

2011-11-22_18-27-17_738-1.jpg2011-11-22, 18:00-19:30 CST
~40F, 80% clear, then clouds/fog rolled in
Home, Ankeny, front porch
Seeing wasn’t great, but not too bad for low power binoculars (15x)

– Used/tested new Celestron 15×70 Skymaster Binoculars
– First light for Ava (6-years-old), she even made her own sight report (see photo)!
– Decided to start sketching for fun, Ava really latched onto that!

What we saw:

* Jupiter
equipment: Celestron 15x70mm binoculars

The Galilean moons were all lined up, very cool. I could maybe see a touch of color in the equatorial bands, but it was difficult at best. Ava claimed she saw brown, red, yellow, and orange colors in Jupiter. I doubted her, and then decided it was time we both start sketching. I guess she has much better eyes than I do, or she was going from books/photos as well as what she saw, because she drew color. Regardless, it was pretty cool to see how my girl (who is afraid of the dark) was out by herself for a few minutes switching from binoculars to her paper and back without even noticing I was gone.

* M31, Andromeda galaxy
equipment: Celestron 15x70mm binoculars

Ava’s first Messier object! (with an astronomy instrument) I wasn’t even looking for Andromeda, I was mostly panning around near Cassiopeia, hoping to run into a nice bright cluster to look at, and then bam, right around zenith popped M31. Very visible with direct vision as a fuzzy disk with a bright core. I was actually surprised it showed up at all. You should have seen Ava’s face when I asked her if she wanted to see another galaxy. So cool. So I made sure to prep her as to what she would really see, and how to look at it. It was a bit difficult for her to get her head cranked below the eyepieces enough to get a good view, but once she did — “I see it! I see it!” I was both surprised and proud of how excited she was to see a fuzzy disk.

My sketches. First ever…don’t judge. 🙂

Skitched-image0.png Skitched-image0.png 1322017843289.jpg

Ava’s sketches and sight report

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3 comments on “2011-11-22 Sight Report, Ava’s first light!Add yours →

  1. Wonderful! Reminds me of the night I showed my then 5 year old daughter Halley’s Comet through my telescope. 🙂
    I do think kids often see color more clearly than us old folks.

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