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 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Oh, and my orbital elements for the satellite viewing are out of date.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.

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 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Oh, and my orbital elements for the satellite viewing are out of date.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.