by Mike Conley
Work and stuff have prevented me from joining you many adventures recently but the need for ancient photons got me out tonight. The weather was slightly below freezing and I only had an hour since I have to go in 4 hours early tomorrow... The sky seems to know these things.. I was using an 8" f/6 dob with 15mm Panoptic and 2.5 Power Mate.
I was able to see mag 4.2 unaided and the down side of winter in the city is the lack of tree leaves to block all those da@# street lights. Oh well....
I started off with Jupiter and had the added treat of seeing the grs and IO casting a shadow which was a first for me. Europa Ganymede and Calisto stretched out in a line from the planet center.
Saturn was lower in the sky (2:00 AM) with considerable seeing problems.
M42/43 were awesome as ever but I was not able to see more than 4 stars in the Trapezium due to seeing/scope not being cooled down enough?
M44 Beehive Cluster - The transparency of the sky seemed worse than Gemini and I couldn't see enough of Cancer to know where to look. (Light pollution) I eventually used the distance between Gemini and Leo to get a general idea and then my 9x50 finder scope helped me get the rest of the way. The Telrad fogged up almost imediately... I was able to see down to mag 11 but no further.
I later moved around to M41 (Open Cluster and M35 another Open Cluster) After giving up on the Leo Triplet.
I know it's not much but I had to get out and try to accomplish something.
Looking for DARK clear skies.. suffering from aperture fever