Moon:

I have always had a love of astronomy and love watching the stars, but up until now this has been through either binoculars or by naked eye.

Until I was given a telescope on Freecycle. It's a Skylux refractor with 700mm focal length.

I had to wait a good while until there was clear sky, but once the clouds had gone, the moon was full and I took some pictures.

This one is not great, I had to hold the camera up to the viewfinder and try not to let it wobble around, next time I will use a tripod for the camera. But, pretty chuffed with the results, and the view through the scope was a 100 times better than this, you could actually see craters and hills on the edge of the moon.

The techncial info on the scope is here:

"It's a proper 70mm F10 achromatic refractor, coated lens, with 2 eyepieces,
star diagonal, 2x barlow, erecting (terrestrial) 1.5x barlow, & finder, AND
it's on a proper German Equatorial mount, on a steady adjustable tripod, with
accessory tray & slow motions on both axes." ...er yeah right, of course.

And for those interested, Lidl (yes the food shop) sell them every year around Nov/Dec for about £59.99 which according to all of the sites I have read is a very good price for a pretty decent scope.

No need to say that I am 'over the moon' with it and now get angry every time it is cloudy at night.