Finally, after all the bad weather in January here in the west of Scotland (mostly rain & strong winds), there was a few nights that were clear and cloud free:-). I managed to take a few more pictures of the moon and Saturn and searched for other interesting objects in the night sky.

I have still been unable to set up the scope for proper tracking to take longer exposures, for two reasons:  1) I found it really difficult to try and line up the scope with Polaris in the dark especially without a red flashlight and 2) I'm not even sure it was Polaris I am trying to line up with:-(  So I have abandoned attempts so far to concentrate just looking through the scope with the precious few clear nights we have had so far.

After reading various astronomy magazines and doing some research online, I decided that the great Orion nebula would be interesting to look at (I have actually seen it before but did not realise it was the Orion nebula I had been looking at, and what I thought was "Cygnus",  was actually Orion,  I had remembered  seeing this strange mist/cloud surrounding a star in that region). I bought a filter especially for the occasion (Baadar O-111). The manufacturer stated that it would give almost photographic views of certain nebula including Orion, NOT through my telescope it didn't!  The view was actually better without it.    BTW I have since purchased a Phillips Planisphere to help stop me confusing constellations:-)

The images on the right were taken on clear/calm nights except for the full moon image which was taken with my telescope inside my house through a window, bad idea.       Image "C" is the best photo ive taken of the moon so far,  clicking on the thumnail will let you see the full size unaltered view of it.

Check back soon for another update which will hopefully include pictures of more planets (probably just Jupitor) & maybe I'll have aligned my telescope to Polaris:-)