by Jay Freeman
I actually dragged my NexStar 8 out of my house at midnight last night (June 5-6), mostly for a look at Mars, but also because I needed Photons. The seeing at Mars's elevation was disappointing, I could detect little detail. At 400x, however (Pentax 5 mm SMC-ED Orthoscopic), I may have gotten an occasional glimpse of Phobos, which was close to eastern elongation at the time. Not enough to log, but enough to encourage those of you with slightly more aperture, or slightly better seeing, to try for it.
Seeing was so-so even at the zenith. Epsilon Lyra was resolved, but the individual stars showed only occasional pieces of the first diffraction ring, always in motion. The Airy disc was mostly visible, but always in motion.
I checked out a few double stars and globulars. M13 was impressive even in the full Moon. I could barely see M14, on the other hand. And without the NexStar's pointing ability, plus a good finder, I would have had trouble finding just about anything fainter than second magnitude.