I’ve been kind of bored for the past couple of days and something my dad said made me want to observe the moon. It is certainly not the best time to be observing the moon or any object for that matter, but I was going out anyway. I decided to take out the best lunar scope I have ever looked through, my 70mm refractor. This was my first telescope ever, and I had my eye on it as soon as I flipped through an Orion catalog. It was a $140 scope, and that seemed like a fortune to me, But I bought it and haven’t regretted it since.
I decided to set up in my backyard at first, but I moved on to the front yard. We have a rather bothersome floodlight in our backyard and a large luminescent streetlight in the front. Pretty much the only thing I looked at was the Moon, of course. It was not the best of nights, one which I rated a 6-7/10.
The camera has a mind of it’s own, and I still haven’t quite figured it out yet. That’s one of the moon shots I took. I tried to post the picture of me looking at the moon with my telescope, but its being stubborn again. If you have looked at the crater Plato on the moon, you might know that there are small craters on the floor of it that are about a mile in length. Those craters are a great showpiece in my telescope and I am grateful to have such a good telescope.
That was the other “good” picture that night. The turbulence in the air was somewhat prominent, and that certainly didn’t help the picture or the observing. I want to also just post a couple of my recent astronomical sketches, and they have nothing to do with this but I thought they were neat. The one on the bottom left is M27 as seen through the 70mm refractor. Other is M92 through 70mm as well.
The night was not very memorable, I moved into the front and fought a war with dozens of crickets and packed it in for the night, thinking I was finished. I watched the Olympics with my family until about 10:30, and went out with my 10×500 binoculars for a minute or 2. I went back to my room and read Amateur Telescope Making for a long time and went out at midnight. I went outside and it turned out to be a sparkling clear night, even with the large moon. I thought I saw something so I turned my binocs to what I found out to be the M31 (Andromeda Galaxy). I thought it would be there and it was beautiful and bright, even with the 10x50s. I ran in quickly and took out my dad’s Meade 4.5 inch reflector and looked at it. The optical quality is not good and the binocular view was better. The night did turn out to be very memorable. 
The Young Astronomer 