Gregoria Luna's Astronomy Blog

 "...and they don't have ANY interest in making these replacement characters well developed. It's all abo--" "GREGORY!" My mother hollered, interrupting the video . "Yeah?" I hollered back. "COME HERE!" And so I did, thinking she needed help with her online teaching. Instead, she was at the front door, and a very large package labelled "SkyWatcher" was outside.

AstronomySource and TelescopicWatch, which had been in the process of a merger (being owned by the same company), are being unmerged. So now I have a job again. I wrote two new reviews, and a guide to buying telescopes for kids is coming soon.

First night of decent seeing for a while, so I took my dob out to look at planets. Last night I went out to observe Mars late, but the darn scope wouldn't cool down and the image was horrible . Tonight was pretty good. In addition to doing some planet viewing, I got some exploration done, and it's always a nice night when you get to see something new.

 A few days ago I became aware of comet C/2020 M3 ATLAS, which was passing through Orion. I resolved that I would give it a try with my 6" f/8 Dobsonian some time. The past few days have had excellent transparency, so I've been using most of them to get some observing done. Two days ago I first tried the comet, but couldn't confirm it. Tonight, I went out again, and I'm pretty sure I got it. Despite not intending to make a big deal of it, I stayed out nearly an hour, did some exploration and found some star clusters.

 On October 25th, my family moved out of our old house and into a new one not too far away. The old one was falling apart due to age, and being a two-level house, my aging parents were having trouble getting around. The new one is smaller but I'm really liking it--especially because I can observe much more easily.