Venus

If you look at the sky at west, you will see a bright "star", that "star" is Venus, the second plant from sun. It's always brighter than any star, so you wouldn't miss it.

It has phases like our moon, the picture show 87% of the phase. I can't really able to see the planet from my toy telescope since it is relatively small as compare to Jupiter or Saturn, slightly smaller than earth actually. It just look like a "star" shining brightly in the sky from my telescope.

Jupiter

It has been sometime I observe the sky, partly because busy and the sky is very cloudy at night. Today, I saw a bright "star" next to the moon, and I know it's time for me to look at Jupiter. So, I took out my toy telescope and point to the brightest star that next to the moon and I saw this.

There are four moons for Jupiter, Callisto, Ganymede, Io and Europa, now Jupiter is in the middle of these moons, two at the left and two and the right. I checked with wiki, the moons are so beautiful, too bad I can only see a dot on my telescope.

From left, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

For such a big planet, I can only see a bluish and brownish planet on my telescope, need a more powerful telescope soon ;) 

My Astrophotography

I bought my telescope since last month, its look like a toy, but the image is definitely sharper than any toy scope available from ebay or Toys'R'Us. I get the telescope kits and a 2x Barlow lens.

So far I only manage to see the moon since that is the most easiest object in the sky for us to see. The image is very very crisp, I feel so close to the moon for the first time. So, in order to share with everyone, I decided to modify my old webcam to capture the image from the telescope. The modification is quite simple, just unscrew the webcam and remove the lens and put the webcam into 1 piece again and tighten the screw. After that, I cut the bottom of the film roll plastic container so that it become a pipe. Then I stick one side of the plastic container to the webcam so that it can be mounted onto the telescope.

So here is the moon video that I'd captured using my old webcam and Firstscope.



Will try to take the video of Jupiter and Saturn when the sky is clear enough.