Under the stars at last

by Peter Rathmann

Sounds about like my evening, although I could only make out 5 stars in the Trapezium. I also wheeled my 8" Newt. down the driveway and did my best to avoid the glare of nearby streetlights (I'll have to try the laser pointer trick sometime). The seeing was rather variable. Saturn showed moments when Cassini's div. stood out perfectly along with some clear banding on the disk, and then it would abruptly dissolve into a shimmering mess. With the substantial light pollution as well as a high haze, I just looked at some of the brighter objects: M42, M31/32/110, M35, and the Auriga clusters. This was also a test of the mount since I had taken it completely apart earlier in the week to deal with some severe binding in the RA axis. I found that on reassembly one of the drive gears wasn't meshing properly, so I alternated viewing with working on the motor mount.

Earlier on Saturday I took my 4" SCT out to have a look at Sol and Venus. There was one sunspot group near the limb, but seeing was not very good. After Sol, I used the setting circles to move over to Venus, which was just a day past inferior conjunction. It showed a beautiful, razor-thin crescent. This is the closest to conjunction that I've ever observed Venus. Also tried to find Jupiter, but my 'wild guess' polar alignment must not have been accurate enough to let me hop there from Sol. Happened to do some birdwatching as well with quite a few geese and other species flying over as I was watching Venus.

Posted on sf-bay-tac Jan 20, 1998 16:20:35 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Feb 15, 2005 20:03:12 PT