At Professor Roslund's instruction for focusing the spell

Orr took out her wand and practice the wand movement before trying the movement plus the incantation. "lens focalis!' she said as she waved her wand in the right movement. She checked her telescope and found that it was much more focused and pointing it in the right direction, she found Venus with little difficulty. Next she needed to find Mercury which with the spell didn't take long at all.

She whispered to Alexia, "Try the spell--it really helps focus the telescope."

Jesifur had been pretty sure she had it in her sight this whole time. Her telescope was pointed toward the horizon and she thought she saw it. It was fuzzy is all, but the professor just taught them the focusing spell, so once she cast it, the planet would become much clearer.

She took a step back from her telescope to give herself room. With a swish of her wand she said, "lens" and a tap of her wand to the telescope she said, "focalis". She stepped towards it again and peered into the lens. It was still pointed in the direction where the sun would come up in a few hours. The sight of it so clearly made her stomach flip, she quickly took her eye away from the telescope and peered in the same direction with just her eyes. Then she peered back into the lens again. It was as if it were right in front of her. The spell seemed to have brought the whole universe closer to them.

After Alexia listened to Professor Roslund she tried the new spell, the focus charm. "Lens focalis" she whispered. then she practiced the wand movement for that spell, swish and tap. She was ready to do it together, "Lens Focalis", she spoke the incantation while doing the wand movement. She looked through her telescope to check if the spell was successful.
Yes it was, it was definitely clearer than it was a while ago.

Then she began searching for Jupiter or Venus, her Telescope much better now, due to the charm.

As she was still looking for the planet, she saw something really big, compared to anything surrounding it. It was a huge reddish-gray ball, she thought it was a star, but it wasn't twinkling. She remembered something from a book she read, 'If you a see a heavenly body that looks like a star but doesn't twinkle, its a planet'.

Alexia called the Professor, "Professor, Professor. Look, Is that Jupiter?" she said. "I'ts really enormous... And look, there's even a big red spot, only Jupiter has that kind of spot". She stared at Professor Roslund for awhile waiting for his answer, then looked up at the planet she just saw.

"Yeah, It did" she smiled again. "did you see it now?", while looking through the telescope. "I found Jupiter already, who could even miss that planet, It's really big!" she laughed softly.

Finally, some help, because Nora was completely lost through all those stars.

After muttering the incantation for a few times, Nora held her wand and said "Lens Focalis" making a swish, and then gently tapped her telescope. Putting her wand back in one of the pockets of her robes, she looked again through the telescope, but...

... no planet, no nothing. Only stars, and the moon.

Why couldn't she find it?

Kourt peered out of the window as the professor asked about the time until dawn. She had absolutely no clue. This was not going to be an easy class...at all. Sighing quietly, she withdrew her wand. Lens foco..no, lens focalis. Lens focalis. She practiced the incantation and then the movement for a few minutes before combining them. Swish and tap 'Lens focalis!"

Stowing away her wand, she peered into the telescope. Hmm, things did look slightly more focused, so where was Mercury? She swung the telescope in the direction where the sun would be rising and attempted to locate the small planet. This might take a while...

Okay..

''Lens - focalis'' she began pratising ''Lens - foalis'' again ''Lens - focalis'' Okay the real thing she pointed at her telescope ''Lens focalis'' swish and tap she looked into the telescope.... Damn she lost it she looked around why was it hard the second time?

Before Alyssa could slide over to Penny to help her find Mercury, she heard the Professor stand up and speak.


"Let's just practice the focus charm, Penny, like the Professor taught us to."Alyssa advised Penny. Even though, she had already located Mercury she wanted to see if the focus charm worked and that what she thought was Mercury indeed was Mercury.

Taking her wand, Alyssa first practiced the wand movements, swish and tap. Once she was familiar with the movements, she swished and tapped the wand on her telescope and said "lens focalis". She looked through her telescope and everything in the sky looked clearer...and here comes the sun!! The time has passed so fast and dawn was approaching. As the sun started rising in the east, Alyssa waited for about 30 minutes and then making sure that she hadn't moved her telescope from its last position, Alyssa peeked through the lens. There He is! Mercury!! The silver white brownish planet, that she thought she had seen earlier. Right to the east of the Sun. Only it was a lot clearer now.

She leaned over to Penny. "Quick Penny, you don't have much time. Mercury can only be seen thirty minutes right after the sun rises....and it's starting to rise fast. Look east of the Sun and you'll find it."

Sky did what the professor said to do and practiced the incantation first. "Lens focalis!" She then did the swish and tap motion on her telescope while saying the spell again "Lens focalis!" Now that her telescope was focused, Sky pointed it to where she knew the Sun would come up, and waited. Now come on, Sun!

Ah, yes. A Charm would be very helpful because so far Eino hadn't been very successful at spotting anything other than stars. "Lens Focalis." Eino practiced the incantation as he searched for his wand in his backpack. Once he pulled it out, he swished it, and tapped the telescope, saying the incantation. Nothing seemed to happen, but when Eino looked through the telescope there was a huge difference. The image was so much more clear, he could actually tell some stars apart from others, and they no longer just looked like a little shiny dot. The image was sharp and clear. Let's see if he could locate Mercury now.

He continued to use his left arm to support the telescope and his right one to rotate it and adjust it. Finally, he saw something different. It was silvery and it didn't blink like the rest of the little dots. Yep, it was Mercury. Eino quickly took his quill and jotted down some notes before going back to his telescope and admiring the view.

Okay lets try the spell, Swish and Tap! "Lens Focalis!" he murmured quietly, before looking up through his telescope, Hmm... More detail in the stars, thats a start.

Ooh look at that! It's Venus! Wow! Jordan studied that for a while, he even made a light sketch of it on some scrap parchment. Once he'd done this, the sun was beginning to come up.

He adjusted his telescope slightly, and there it was... The silver, white and brownish planet. He studied it intently, taking every last detail in. He made another sketch and some notes on it, he was starting to enjoy this class!

He was tempted to smile, and he did, once she laughed...but was she...guessing? He'd always had trouble identifying Mercury, truth be told. The fact that all the planets looked very alike, except for Mars and Saturn, always made him second-guess his final answer.

Of course, the Professor spoke up just in time, and he listened as the spell was explained, he didn't pay much attention to what Mercury would look like, though. If Sierra did, she was bound to find it before he did.

"Okay...," he was going to be completely honest, "...Mercury is one planet I haven't been able to find too quickly," true, and he got confused by the small size of it as well, "The left one is brighter than the right one, but the right one looks a bit more silvery...kind of like Mercury is supposed to look. Yet he is the brightest planet of them all." His eyes went to his notes as he said the last part, clearly he'd seen Mercury before, that's why he wrote that.

"The brightest one also looks like it should be bronze in color," not precisely brown, but kind of brownish.

As far as the spell went...Treyen looked Sierra's way, "It's your telescope," so she should try the spell.

Ellie was...tired. The sleep schedule she'd been trying to get on since the first of September, and finally managed to do successfully last week, was now completely messed up. It was just another reason to dislike Astronomy.

She'd taken a telescope from the cupboard because she hadn't a clue where hers was. She probably hadn't so much as touched it since her first term. Merlin knew if it was even in her trunk or not. But with the school's telescope, she'd been trying to look at this planet for however long they'd been there. In all honesty, she didn't know exactly what it was she was supposed to be looking for. A dot labeled 'Mercury', maybe? For all she knew, she could have been staring at that same planet all along.

After hearing the Professor's instructions, she swished her wand, tapped her telescope, saying, "Lens Focalis." And tried looking through it again. With, in her opinion, was not much of a different result.

She looked at whoever was scribbling notes beside her. Eino. Her eyes narrowed at him. Could he really have seen that planet already. And WHY wasn't she seeing it?

The fifth year moved even closer to the boy, almost so she was right on top of him, and mimicked his telescope's position with hers. She peered through the eyepiece and saw....much of the same of what she saw before she'd popped his personal space bubble.

Sigh.

"What am I looking for, Eino?" Yes, she was whining. She just wanted to find the stupid planet and go to bed. "Help, please?" Please?

"Right," Nate said, bemusedly. He was still disappointed that he hadn't seen an attempted murder. He pulled put his wand, making surety grab the handle and not the shaft (he had made that mistake before), swished, "Lens--" and tapped his telescope, "--Focalis!". And upon looking into his telescope, it has gotten slighty better. Ought to improve my mood he thought, remembering that intent was very important in magic. "*ahem* Lens Focalis!" Nate said, casting the charm again. He looked through his scope again. "Wow, that is clearer!" he said to himself more than anyone else. "Still can't find it though..." he said quietly as he scourged the skies for it, both on the eastern side of the sky and next to what he thought were Jupiter and Venus.

Oh, there was a spell that would help?? Ashley... well, he really liked spells. So he was happy to get to practicing the charm, with a swish and tap of his wand in the air as he said the words, "lens focalis", a few times to get the rhythm right.
Once he felt he had it down, he tried it on his telescope, swish and tap, "lens focalis", instantly peering in to see if anything had changed.
He still didn't know exactly where to look, even if what he was seeing had been improved greatly. Silvery. Supposed to be visible close to sunrise. At least that made it a little easier. He knew where the sun was supposed to be coming from, so he could start by gazing over in that direction. Now to find silvery, whitish, brownish.
Looking around, he thought about attempting to find another planet first, as suggested, but that just sounded like it would mix him up. So he continued to look, moving the telescope slowly until he came across something that juuuuuuust might be it. Hopefully.
He made a couple of mental notes to write down later, then went back to watching what he had found, to see if it matched enough characteristics to actually be Mercury.

Ariella sighed with relief. So there was a charm after all. She thought that there had to be a catch. It seemed nearly impossible to find Mercury, especially since there were so many stars and other planets visible. She took out her wand and grasped it tightly.

She practiced the incantation itself a few times before performing the spell. "Lens focalis!" she said firmly, swishing and tapping her telescope. She crossed her fingers that the spell would work.

As Rory focused on that bluish figure in the night sky, Professor Roslund had managed to come to the description of the planet of Mercury. Silver, white, and brown. So, he was completely wrong. Whatever. Mercury still sounded like a blue planet to him and nothing was going to change that. Nevertheless, he sighed in frustration and moved his telescope around in search of something looked very white and silver and brownish. It seemed like an odd combination of colors, though Rory wondered if it had anything to do with the sun's reflection upon it.

As they were taught a spell to refocus their lens properly, Rory quickly ran back to his bag to pull out his handy dandy notebook (clearly, he had been watching too many episodes of this ridiculously old children's show, Blue's Clues) and began writing down information about this spell. When he finished, he stashed it back into his bag and ran back to his spot near the window and began to practice the spell.

To ensure that the focus was changed, Rory looked into the telescope as he pointed it at the sky. Blurry. Then, he took out his wand. He swished and then tapped the telescope with the tip of his wand before saying, "Lens Focalis!" Putting his wand down, Rory looked through his telescope again only to see that it was still a little bit blurry. So, he tried once more. A swish and a tap, and..."Lens Focalis!" He looked through the telescope again and his eyes widened at the clarity of the lens. He could the stars a bit more clearer and even the colors were not as ambiguous as before. Time to search the skies again and hopefully before dawn!

"Okay, Mercury...you brown, silver, and white planet. Where the heck are you?" Rory muttered to himself. Brown, silver, and white...brown, silver, and white...What did the other planets look like? Wait, no. Focus! Brown, silver and white...hmm.

Louisa was glad when the professor addressed them. She gave the Gryffindor prefect a look of impression - did that girl know where Venus and Jupiter were? Louisa did know them in a book! Not up in the sky. Focusing on the spell the professor now was elaborating Louisa was mouthing the incantation mutely.

Once they were done and was time to move on, she started swishing her wand and doing a tap move without saying the incantation. Then she started on the incantation without the wand movement, "Lens focalis, lens focalis..lens focalis..lens focalis.."

Time to try it out. Louisa faced her telescope, "Lens focalis." Swish and tap. Nothing happened, of course, she leaned in and looked through the telescope. The image was sure sharper than the last time she did it.

Now to look for this tiny grey brown planet.

Hearing the professor's voice over the crowd around her, Sierra glanced up. How long was it until dawn? Hmm. She looked toward Treyen and shrugged. How was she meant to know how far away dawn was? It was too short of a time span if you asked her. Nights were meant for sleeping, which she sort of hoped to do well before dawn.

Ugh, ...did the professor have to go and ruin whatever good mood Sierra had left by mentioning Hollingberry? Instead of rolling her eyes in the presence of Treyen, she decided to focus on practicing the wand movement and incantation they'd just been taught. "...could have used this ten minutes ago," Sierra mumbled, flicking her wand out its holster.

She stared at Treyen as he went over things that confused her from the time he opened his mouth. Then he suggested she try the spell on her telescope, which was more along the lines of what she'd been thinking. Right. Focus the telescope first and then worry about silver objects, bright objects, bronze objects and whatever-objects up in the sky. "Alright then," she said, aiming her wand. She swished her wand and then tapped on the telescope. "Lens Focalis!" She waved Treyen toward it. "What's it look like now?"

Wait...WHAT?!

Kurumi's eyes bugged out of their exhausted eye sockets. They were going to stay until dawn?! A large yawn escaped her lips, and Kurumi flailed around a bit to cover her mouth so as not to appear too rude. Really though, could the man blame the students. She was usually asleep around 11 pm and had only gotten a small nap in before the lesson due to Quidditch and prefecting duties.

"Lens Focalis....Lens Focalis..." Kurumi repeated slowly. All the 'l' sounds...After a few more moments of practicing, Kurumi removed her wand from her robes. She hadn't been expecting to use her wand in Astronomy to be honest. But, new professor, new school term. Always expect the unexpected at Hogwarts, right? With a swish and a tap, Kurumi repeated the wand movement a few times before combining them together. "Lens Focalis."

Had it worked?
...

Kurumi peered into her telescope and didn't really notice any changes. Hmm...oh, wait, it WAS clearer. She could see so many different stars now - some that she needed to look up in her text - and returned to her notebook. At least now she had something to pass the time until dawn. Right?

However, Kurumi's notes had rather large gaps in them from time to time due to her slightly dozing off with her eye pressed against the viewfinder of the telescope. At least it looked as though she were working, right? It was a long time until dawn.


Kurumi paused for a moment from her notes, the bags under her eyes becoming more and more noticeable by the minute. "Professor...as the sun rises it gets a bit harder to see, even with Lens Focalis," she said slowly and with an obvious hint of exhaustion to her tone. "Is there a spell that acts as a filter against the sun's rays?" If they were going to pretty much be looking RIGHT AT the sun, it was probably a good idea to have some sort of eye protection.

While she waited, Kurumi noticed that the sky in her window was much MUCH brighter and was taking on the hazy glow of dawn. Her eyes immediately flicked to the right and she saw that the sun was rising. EEK! Not too much longer now!

Zhenya stared at her telescope for a moment before pulling out her wand. Okay Zhenya, focus!, she thought.

"lens focalis" she said, swishing her wand and tapping nothing in the air - just practising. She practised a few times before trying it on her telescope, and looked through it. Yes, she had found Mercury before! She felt very relieved that she had found something in the sky that was the right planet.

Erin listened intently to the Professor's instructions. The buish one she spotted earlier isn't Mercury since according to her Professor, it's a silver, white and brownish planet. Moving on, she peeked once again to her telescope. Erin followed what she was instructed, she practiced first with the spell. She swish and tap the wand in the air and muttered firmly, "Lens Focalis." She repeated for a couple of times then finally it's the right time.

Erin swish her wand and tap the telescope then she muttered firmly but softly, "Lens Focalis." Th telescope moved to a direction she hadn't checked yet. She peeked over the holes. And there it was, clear and sharp silver, white bluish color. "Mercury!" Oh, so it's already dawn?

Selina was exhausted. No more of this staying up nonsense. She had practice the following day or, well, today now and she could not sacrifice her sleep for pulling an all nighter. Besides, an irritable Selina was perhaps the worst kind of Selina their could be. So she would stay up until her eyes gave out, she would not push it any farther than that.

Then she drew out her wand and muttered, "Lens Focalis, Lens Focalis." Then finally, after having said it enough in her opinion, she did the correct movement with her wand and said a little more voiced, "Lens Focalis."

She took a peak in the telescope and saw that it was indeed a little clearer... no wait, much clearer. She supposed that the universe was interesting... she guessed.

As the time started to drag on Selina could feel her eyes starting to droop. She folded her arms over her telescope and rested her head on her arms. Then she wiggled a little to get comfortable and went to sleep. She could feel her red hair tickling her face a little, but she was too tired to care. It was bed time.[/QUOTE]

Hmm, lens focalis. Waving his wand back and forth he mouthed the words to the spell over and over until they practically rolled from his tongue. Well, might as well get it over with.

"Lens Focalis!" he cried with a swish and a tap before bending down to check if it had worked. Squinting his non-dominant eye closed he noticed that things did indeed seem a bit clearer than before.

Now what was it the Professor had said? Look for Venus? Meh, that was too difficult. Cael decided it'd be simpler to stick with one he already knew. Swinging his telescope over he found the sun, careful not to stare directly at it. Slowly moving out, he was impressed to see the telescope adjust its focus for every star or planet it passed.

Finally he spotted something tiny and somewhat white-brown floating near the sun. Was this it? Had he really found it?!

Meh, best to ask the Professor before he got too excited. "Professor, is this Mercury?" he asked, fairly certain that it was. "I started with the sun and moved outward like you suggested."

So Gideon was right and Mercury was only available to be seen at those times causing the boy to frown slightly. So what was the point of them looking for Mercur---wait they were gonna wait until then? The Gryffindor almost groaned at the prospect. Pulling watches with his mother was one thing...Celeste Gert usually warned you when it was and you managed to catch some more sleep before hand. The professor was having them up for hours on end.

Sighs...

"Lens Focalis," he cast on his telescope, the instrument becoming clearer much like the other spell he had seen his family astronomer cast on her own telescope. Gideon did his best to focus on the planets the professor mentioned as guides, finally setting it in a direction so that it pointed nearly to the exact horizon. Once done he sat down and took a few notes, yawning as they awaited the appearance of the errant planet.



After a while, Gideon got up from his seat feeling the need to walk around, coming up beside Kurumi on oneside he spotted the detailed notes she was taking. "Ye would certainly make my mother proud," he mused with a smile. Even his own notes weren't that thourough but it wasn't because he was lazy, it just wasn't how he did stuff.



Hearing the squeak of a telescope nearby, Gideon glanced around some more only to spot Selina near his placement as well. Though unlike Kurumi and he, she was clearly asleep or at least resting her eyes. "Selina..." he called out careful not to be too loud to shock her. He then glanced back at Kurumi as if asking for her opinion. "What do ye think we should do?"

Willow tool her wand out of her robes and practiced the spell before pointing it at her telescope. With a clear, load voice she said "Lens Focalis". Looking through her telescope, she let out a smal squeak! She could see so much more now?! After gazing at the stars for a while, she then focussed her attention on finding mercury. After searching the horizon for a couple of minutes, she finally spotted it! "Professor! I think I've found Mercury!" she grinned.