Front Yard OR from January 24th

by Jake Burkart

Tuesday the 24th was my 32nd birthday so I decided to pull out my scope and take advantage of the clear moonless sky. It took me forever to get setup. I was interrupted by phone calls, visiting neighbors, and my needy 2-year-old. I guess that is a drawback of observing from home. Once my equipment was setup and aligned I worked on imaging M42. It's been months since I had all the imaging gear out, so my results were less than spectacular. I imaged through my 80mm refractor while using my 11" SCT with the autoguider. If I plan to shoot through a refractor much more I should really invest in a better scope. Maybe I'll put the Orion 80ED Apo on my wish list.

The highlight of my evening was using my new Nagler 4.8mm eyepiece. I packed away the imaging equipment and decided to look at Mars and Saturn before I called it a night. Mars was nothing to write home about. Even with the 4.8mm I wasn't able to see any surface detail. It was just a fuzzy little ball. Saturn was a different story altogether. It took me a moment to get it centered and focused. This eyepiece gives me 583x so it takes some patience and a light touch to get everything just right. When Saturn snapped into focus I almost lost my breath. The Cassini division seemed huge and gaping. I was easily able to distinguish bands of light and dark on the planet surface. I was so excited about the amount of detail I could see that I ran inside and dragged my poor wife out of our warm cozy bed to come and look. She did not share my same enthusiasm unfortunately.

By the time I got the scope packed away and everything cleared off the front lawn my head was throbbing and my throat was sore. I enjoyed my birthday observing session even if I'm paying by having a head cold.

Posted on tac-sac Jan 28, 2006 09:41:33 PT
Converted by report.pm 1.2 Mar 05, 2006 20:22:15 PT