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My God... It's Full of Stars!
It was rather cold last night --low forties Fahrenheit-- but the skies were largely clear so it was time to break out the telescope, it's first use since ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cuyahogarvr gave it to me for my birthday back in January.
The first snag is that I didn't have a compass so lining it up north-south was problematic. Instead, I aligned it to Polaris for a best-guess, then used a built-in alignment function to get a fix on Vega. Some minor additional alignment tuning was required but I was able to focus easily on Mars and Saturn last night.
The other newly-learned quirk is that while our trailer deck is very level, it shakes excessively under high magnification. If the skies are clear again tonight, I'll try setting up elsewhere on a cement platform.
Oh, and my orbital elements for the satellite viewing are out of date. I'll have to refresh everything before I head out here again.
Still, it was all very fun and I didn't even notice the cold or how late it was getting. Even without the telescope, I saw several meteors, a dozen different satellites (including an interesting trio moving in a triangular formation north to south) and a few bats. Life is good.
cuyahogarvr gave it to me for my birthday back in January.The first snag is that I didn't have a compass so lining it up north-south was problematic. Instead, I aligned it to Polaris for a best-guess, then used a built-in alignment function to get a fix on Vega. Some minor additional alignment tuning was required but I was able to focus easily on Mars and Saturn last night.
The other newly-learned quirk is that while our trailer deck is very level, it shakes excessively under high magnification. If the skies are clear again tonight, I'll try setting up elsewhere on a cement platform.
Oh, and my orbital elements for the satellite viewing are out of date. I'll have to refresh everything before I head out here again.
Still, it was all very fun and I didn't even notice the cold or how late it was getting. Even without the telescope, I saw several meteors, a dozen different satellites (including an interesting trio moving in a triangular formation north to south) and a few bats. Life is good.