by Richard Crisp
I was the only astronomer at MB last night. I went up there to meet a couple of friends that were planning to take a 10" LX200 up that one buddy was selling to the other. But one of the guys didn't have the time to do the field trip portion of the deal, so they remained in the valley to close the deal.
I also wanted to fiddle with TheSky and my Gibraltar mount/TV101. Even though the moon was about half full by my eye, I figured that I may as well go up anyway because it is so pleasant up there.
The sky was clear but there was wind and so Mars was pretty jumpy. The moon was great looking, and I spent about 20 minutes or more looking at the south pole region near the terminator. I was mostly observing at 135x but did move once to 540x just for grins (hey the 4X Powermate was lying there saying "use me, use me". At 540x things were not too sharp as I expected, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was as sharp as it was. That TV101 just keeps growing on me! The south pole craters look awesome when side illuminated!
I also peeked at the Lagoon and Trifid and Swan as well as peered into the tail of the Scorpion.
But since I had some issues still needing resolution with TheSky interfacing to the Gibraltar, I left a little after 10:15.
Onb Thursday night the ride down the hill was clear all the way, but Wed there was fog when I descended which was about an hour later. Yet both Wed and Thurs the skies were clear at the site.
I think I will work on improving the collimation of my Celestron 14" this weekend and not likely go out unless there's a pretty good sized group that wants to go someplace. I like looking at the moon, but DSOs are more interesting to me.