The Moon In My Backyard

Viewing the moon through a telescope is something I highly recommend doing every once in a while, when the weather is good. I love my city, Toronto, to bits. But one thing that drives us locals a bit nuts is the lack of that beautiful night sky, that we all know is there beyond the light pollution.

Jay and I tend to wind up having impromptu parties in our backyard… in hopes of seeing chunks of rock fly through the air, whenever there’s a call for a meteor shower. A highlight for me was watcginga huge orange bolder seemingly somersault throughout the dark sky, just above our house. Solidly visible, even despite the massive amount of light it had to penetrate for us to see.  It’s a sight I hope to never forget.

Despite the fact that we heard it would be completely useless to use a telescope to catch a meteor shower (seeing as those rocks don’t stick in one place long enough to view it through a scope,) Jay and I ended up purchasing one after the more recent call for a shower.  At $100 off regular price, we couldn’t resist! So this big baby came home with us…

[easyazon_link identifier=”B000MLHMAS” locale=”CA” nw=”y” nf=”y” tag=”geewitsty-20″ cart=”n” cloak=”y” localize=”y” popups=”y”][/easyazon_link]
[easyazon_link identifier=”B000MLHMAS” locale=”CA” nw=”y” nf=”y” tag=”geewitsty-20″ cart=”n” cloak=”y” localize=”y” popups=”n”]Celestron 21061 Astromaster 70 Az Refractor Telescope[/easyazon_link]

And boy, do we have a lot of learning to do!  It came with two eyepieces (20mm and 10mm lenses,) but we were only able to get one of them to properly work (the 10mm currently makes everything look like one big blurry mess,) so we’re obviously missing something vital to really make a go of stargazing.

Last night though, it was all perfect.

Have you seen the Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey series?  Shockingly created by the same dude who created Family Guy (I like to think that the Cosmos series is Seth MacFarlane’s one big apology for still having  Family Guy on air.)  Bottom line, if this 13 episode series was available while I was still in high school, I would have paid more attention to certain science classes. It showcased all these integral invisibilities; bits and pieces that build one giant meaning-of-life equation, and turned it into a cartoon that everyone could understand.  It inspired me to learn more.  Neil deGrasse Tyson has become one of my favourite people ever, but I digress…

TheHubs and I got to test out our brand spanking new Astromaster telescope for the first time last night, simply set up right in our back yard, and we aimed it straight at the moon.  It was actually the very first time I’ve ever looked through a telescope and was completely shocked at how clear our view was.  Just about shed a tear, it was so darn pretty.  I mean, yeah, we all know that telescopes are meant to make things in the night sky seem all that much closer, but I had no idea just how much so!

Squeeee, look it!

Yeah, the pics are a bit blurry, sorry! I used my Canon DSLR, but I don’t yet have a tripod for it, so grabbing still, clear pictures was apparently impossible to do.

I think this just might become a brand new hobby though.  Last night, the moon was more or less in apogee (the moon was at its farthest distance from Earth on June 2nd,) and I’ve marked my calendar for June 14th where the moon will hit its next perigee (where the moon is at its closest distance to Earth.) Just have to keep fingers crossed for beautiful weather!

EDIT – It took a while to finally get time to upload, but here are pics from June 14th!