Should be a good night for observation and maybe take some pics so I can work with plate solving to assist in learning the sky. The moon phase is waxing gibbous and rises at 18:58, sunset is at 19:45<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Setup started around 15:00. I aligned my finders as precisely as I could to the OTA without a reticle eyepiece. That will be my first acquisition once money becomes available again. I targeted in on my neighbor\u2019s old TV antenna that is about 35 feet up, so it worked out quite nicely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tonight will be another observation session, eyepieces to be used are the 25mm LE, 5mm LE and the 2x Barlow. The Canon will be mounted on the \u00bc 20 mount point again. This time I plan on trying to get it as focused as precisely as I can get it. Depending on where the moon is I will try and focus the camera on that. I\u2019ll be using the Nifty 50 and the SynScan hand controller. Nothing in particular to target, just random spots in the sky and some images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Equipment used, pretty much everything in my tag line, except for the ZWO equipment<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It took me about an hour and half to get through the alignment of the finders and then the setup and rough Polar alignment. I got everything setup then one of the tripod legs was loose and messed everything up. I use my phone\u2019s sensors to level and get to true north. Nice to have in the field. I decided to move the scope to a better position in the yard to give at least some view of southern sky, I get maybe 15 or 20 degrees off of zenith, the western side is a complete bust due to the tree line on the back side of yard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scope configuration started with 5mm in the OTA and the 25mm in the 60mm Orion guide scope. I saw my first star at 20:25 at zenith, Vega according to Sky Safari. The 2nd<\/sup> star to appear was Altair at 20:37 then Deneb as 20:39. I couldn\u2019t see anything to the north east but there was a street light that I tried to use to focus the camera. That was when I found that Live View wasn\u2019t \u201cworking\u201d. I slewed up to a blank sky in the general vicinity of Cassiopeia around 21:15 and got a look at my first star of the night through the scope, based on the star pattern and Sky Safari I would guess it was Navi. At 21:21 I moved on to Caph. I switched out the 5mm with the 25mm at 21:25 then moved over to Cas at 21:28. I saw a bright light in the vicinity of the Moon, I knew it wasn\u2019t a star, it was way too bright so I thought I\u2019d take a look and Jupiter just popped with four of her moons, Ganymede, Europa, Io and Callisto. I ogled Jupiter through the various configurations of my eye pieces, 25mm then 25mm and 2x Barlow, then 5mm then 5mm and 2x Barlow, what a beautiful sight. I barely could make out one of the bands around her. I also took the time to fine tune my finder scopes using Jupiter, they were close already but now they are spot on. It\u2019s way nice to target in using the view finders and finding the star smack dab in the middle of my FOV. I was on Jupiter and her moons for about 45 minutes when I turned my scope to the east, I could make out a few stars but there just wasn\u2019t enough to make out any star patterns due to the Moon being almost full, she was so bright tonight. Then I spied Saturn above and slightly to the right of the Moon so I slewed there to see what she might look like overshadowed by the Moon. Not much really to see. I then tried to Go To the Moon and SynScan said, she was below the horizon, what!? No, she was\u2019nt. Then I tried to Go To Jupiter, same thing, below the horizon, now what\u2019s up with that, I had just ogled her for close to forty five minutes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With the camera a bust and SynScan obviously drunk, I called it and broke down around 22:30. I checked Live View in the office and it was working fine, so I must not of had the scope pointed close enough to the street light to make Live View fire up. A quick search of the forums, told me that I had my time zone offset wrong, I\u2019m -6 and I had it set to +6, problem solved. I suspect, I\u2019ll have the camera problem resolved for my next session. Tracking was good the whole night, I could see some drift but not really a lot and since the camera was a bust, it didn\u2019t really matter. Again, imaging wasn\u2019t what I really after tonight. I learned to associate three stars with their names, Altair, Vega and Deneb. I just need to reinforce that. Sky Safari is a wonderful tool. I\u2019m looking forward to my next session to utilize what I learned tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"