Autumn truly is my favorite time of the year, cool evenings with little to no skeeters. Tonight, is to be another clear night with a low of 52 degrees, humidity is currently a little higher now than it was yesterday, it’s a balmy 70%. Sunset is at 19:03 and moonrise is 20:48. I won’t get to see the Moon until around 22:30 or so once she clears the horizon and the tree line to the east of me. I’ll have plenty of time to get my alignment straight. Batteries for the illuminator are here so that will prove to be a great assistance in the process with the reticle. I will insure I have the correct coordinates set in the mount. After last night, I don’t think that will be a lesson soon forgotten, my legs are still feeling the pain of squatting for close to two hours. I’ve also reconfigured the mount to the tripod to help with rough alignment. I set the single leg so it will be pointing to the north instead of south. I will also eyeball the alignment of the mount with the weight rod extended and made sure it’s centered to the northern facing tripod leg. I can’t get any closer than that until the mount is in place and leveled. I’m going to takes some shots of the Moon using the Optalong L-Pro filter and see how they come out, should be interesting. I suspect I’ll have to increase the exposure time.
EP to be used are 25mm, 12.5mm reticle, and 5mm in conjunction with a 2x Barlow. The 12.5 is lighted with double cross hairs with a 40-degree FOV. Filter to be used is the Optalong L-Pro.
I got outside around sundown and again enjoyed the Autumn air, the fact that there were no skeeters was wonderful. Jupiter came up over the trees to the east and south so I started polar alignment. It went a lot smoother with the reticle now having light. I also figured since I was only going to do a 1-star alignment I didn’t need to wait to for astronomical twilight to end. I made sure the GPS coordinates were set and about 15 minutes later I was done. Tracking wasn’t perfect but definitely a lot better than the previous night. Jupiter still drifted slightly but again, nothing like the night before. When Saturn showed up, I did a Go To and she was in the eye piece though not quite centered. This was her first light through my scope and I was stunned.
I could clearly make out Saturn’s rings, though they all looked like one big one. I switched back and forth between the three EP while occasionally looking at her up in the sky with just my eyes. My blood was rushing and I stared at her until the Moon came up and washed her away., that lasted a little over an hour. I switched to Jupiter and got to see her for another 10 minutes clearly before the Moon’s light turned her into nothing more than a bright dot. That was around 21:50. The AP target for the night was going to be the Moon.
I figured out how to get the 5mm to focus with the 2x Barlow by pulling the barrel back in the Barlow. Figured since the Canon needed some additional back focus in the image train the 5mm would be the same way and I was right. Unfortunately, I didn’t think of it in time to look at Saturn using the 5mm with the Barlow, next time.
The Moon showed herself just starting to peek through the trees above my house to the east around 22:00. I had been sitting for a couple of minutes when my oldest nephew joined me. H was worried that he might have been disturbing me, no, definitely not. We talked for a few moments then I started to show him the scope configuration. I attached the Canon with the L-Pro to the OTA and reestablished my tablet’s connection to the mount PC. I tracked in on the Moon and there she was in Live View. It was an awesome thing to see the trees moving down while the Moon stayed centered in the camera. He thoroughly enjoyed the demonstration and especially enjoyed the live feed of the Moon. He was mesmerized when I zoomed in and could see crater details. He loves tech too. We chatted for a while until the Moon finally emerged from behind the trees. I experimented with several different ISO and exposure settings until I decided on ISO 400 exposure 1/500. The only difference was the ISO setting from the previous night, it was 100. I took 30 light, 10 dark and 10 bias, I’ll set the scope up and take some flats this weekend. We’ll see what we will see.
Clear Skies!