@Owlunar@Former-Member@outlander@Former-Member@utopia

Absolutely love this thread, I'm an astronomy nut too!  We have an 8inch telescope which is great,  astronomy excites my imagination as to what could be out there.  I have forgotton a lot of terminology but when we bought our telescope about 15 years ago we got a free 1 day astronomy course at an observatory which was fantastic.  We are actually saving now for another telescope what they call point and look so you can take anywhere, the one we have is very cumbersome and its on a very heavy tripod.

Unfortunately here in SA its been pretty cloudy lately at night, early hours it gets clear but too late as I need to get up for work.  

Not sure if any of you have seen the jewel box, it looks via naked eye just like a bright star but if you look with telescope and maybe binoculars you see its made up of so many stars.  We came upon it by accident just exploring " dark bits"  in the sky with the telescope and it was abosolutely beautiful. see below.

The jewel box when you look through telescope