Last night my wife and I opened astronomical season lying on sofa on our balcony and watching stars and Jupiter with old (“made in USSR”) 8×30 binocular.
It was first clear night after several weeks of clouds and rains. Incredibly poor summer for our region.
First, I tried to guess constellations. I don’t know constellations very well yet, and sky is not as dark as it was during my last May observations (and light pollution was higher, so some constellations was barely visible), so I only supposed that triangle high at sky is a Cygnus, then I launched Stellarium and found that my guess was right and bright star below Cygnus is Altair.
After watching Milky Way and random stars, I showed to Margarita globular cluster M13 in Hercules and “The Coathanger” Cr399 in Vulpecula. Then we watched Jupiter for some time, being able to spot two of its moons (another two bright satellites too very close to Jupiter). Now we are going to try to watch it with telescope — if weather will permit.
