Observations

Last night was my first Astronomy night!

We observed the crescent Venus through the telescope, which was really cool. It was the first planet I have ever seen have phases. The part that was not in the shadow was bright glowing yellow, which was similar to the sun, but more white-goldish. We also saw the Hubble satellite! It was only there for a short streak across the sky before it went into the Earth's shadow. In the telescope, I saw the moons of Jupiter in a straight line, then observed the position change over the next hour, where there was a shift and the moons looked further from the planet (they were one diameter at the start, but then moved farther away). We also observed M7 in the telescope, which was a globular cluster; it kinda looked like an octopus. Other then that, the cool green laser was used to point out many of the summer stars and constellations. I hadn't really been able to observe such a large amount at the same time since there is a bad horizon at my house because of all of the trees. We also saw Vega, Polaris, Anteres, and Altair. I'm excited for the next one!