Early morning session December 9th

I was up early and out at 0450 GMT. There was thin cloud about but some stars and the Moon were visible, so I shot the zenith and the area around Orion and Sirius.

Unfortunately, none of the shots worked.

I returned at 0515 with my “Cat”. It was hard to photograph the Moon, although the view showed Grimaldi had librated some way from the limb. The practicalities of using a less than sturdy mount and eyepieces with a .965” thread were vastly different to using a Maksutov on an EQ/3 mount. Although the result was disappointing and worse than I’ve done with my binoculars, at least Grimaldi is clearly visible.

I saw Venus through the telescope but its disc was too small to estimate a phase and Mercury was the same. Oh for my Mak and a webcam!