Astronomy

we are now fully qualified telescope geeks - we went to this thing called skywatch the other night in coonabarabran. Its mainly for tourists but is set up pretty well with a powerful telescope in one of those funny dome buildings, where the roof retracts and moves left and right

so we managed to see and learn a few things, namely

you can see jupiter most night, and through the telescope you can see its 5 moons (it actually has loads more too)

we saw a start cluster with about a million stars all packed closely together (i think it was called omega centurian)

our closest star which is the brightest is alpha centurian, which when viewed through the telescope is actually two stars very close together - nuts! Its also 4 light years away

we also looked closely at the moon and could see all the craters perfectly

Pluto is smaller than australia!

You can see the milky way clear here too, it forms a cloud like band right across the top of the sky at night

all in all a lovely night!