An awesome early Christmas morning sky viewing, totally worth getting up early for.

Getting out of bed at 3:30am is pretty hard at the best of times. Waking up the 11yo boy too and on Christmas morning is really stretching it.

But a crystal clear sky and the prospect of seeing Comet Lovejoy meant we just had to do it.

And it was so worthwhile. As soon as we got out of the car we could see the comet's tail - stretching two full handspans up from the ESE horizon.

We caught the end of a pass by the International Space Station. Mars was clear and glowing orange, our favourite - Saturn - had returned to the sky and was beautiful, with an orange band clearly showing.

We also found two open clusters and three nebula closely bunched in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Jaxom saw several shooting stars, we both saw an Iridium satellite - including a bright flare.

We were amazed to watch two bright satellites seemingly on a collision course, but they missed...

All the while the small mob of kangaroos surrounding us were grunting their displeasure at the company.

And to cap it off, the Star Walk app on the phone showed us Santa and his sleigh doing laps around the sky. Upside down every time - must be written by Americans...

Sorry I haven't got any super special photos of the comet to share, but we are seriously lacking in the decent camera stakes... Perhaps Santa will bring me a Canon 550??

So if Christmas is about family, then I really couldn't think of a better way to start it off than this wonderful sky session with my son.