20060619 2155 First sighting of Mercury, very low in the west. Looks like a medium star in the binos. Mars and Saturn about 1deg apart in the west. Jupiter high overhead, lovely as always. It is amazing I had never noticed how the seasonal constellations change.
20060510 2200 Very clear night for us here in the city. Stayed out long enough for the optics to start to cool and we were rewarded with spotting the Cassini division in Saturn's rings. the Division was invisible about 50% of the time, visible about 40% of the time and perfectly clear about 10% of the time. Looked at Jupiter for a long time and could see the banding pretty clearly. Either we were kidding ourselves or we could see a creamy oval feature adjacent to and outside a light band every once in a while. [note: I used an online calculator later and verified that the GRS would have transited Jupe at 2251, so it would have been where we thought we were seeing it.
Also used a moon filter and eyeballed the clear moon. Beautiful.
Tried to eyeball Mars; it was tiny even at about 150X or so. I couldn't run 200x usefully tonight.
20060326 0030 Earlier this week I got a 6mm and the kit. I've been working a weird sked and so had not been able to see Jupiter. Holy Crap, that's bright. Took out the binos and could clearly make out that Jupe was a planet and could see 3 or so stars. The wife and I were amazed you could see that with binos. Took the dob out and got best results from the 13mm. Could see bands on J, but not clearly. Turns out we could see four starts. Turned the scope on Sat but could not see the Cassini division.
20060316 2230 Assembled the dob and took it out for first light. Used the 25mm and 13mm plossls, which are all I had that point.
Saturn -- looked ghostly, unreal to us the first time out. White like a tapeworm. Rings were cleanly seperated from the planet.
Orion Nebula - scoped the Orion nebula and saw four little stars in a trapezoidal pattern.... oh, I get it now. :-)
20060315 1520
Got the Celestron binos in the mail today. Picked them up on the way
to work. These suckers are big and heavy, and seem to have good optics.
Of course, a massive cloud front rolled int...
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