Bill's Sky

  The night is mostly clear with a few passing high clouds. Transparency otherwise is probably about a 4/5. Seeing is average, about Antoniadi 3.5 when Saturn was about  30 degrees above the horizon, improving to A3 as it rose higher. Moon is 96% waning, NELM about 3.5. I could only really make out Polaris, Kochab, and Pherkad in the little dipper, mostly due to sky glow. This is the first time I've actually taken time to set the Orion up properly.I have replaced the screws for the accessory tray. Like most telescope tripods, the tray serves as a spreader and brace for the legs. Having this in correctly helped with shakiness. I also tightened up the bolts holding the legs to the base of the mount. They were loose enough that the joint would flex when moving the telescope. The focuser is very stiff and needs to be reworked. The slow motion controls work well but OTA started bumping the azimuth knob at certain elevations. Initially the view wasn't much better than I had last yea...

   The sky is mostly clear but very bright tonight. NELM is about 4. I can only make out Polaris and the two brightest stars of the cup, Kochab and Pherkad . There seems to be a lot of moisture in the air so transparency is way down from the other night. I took the 8SE out and remounted it on the pier. I had some trouble leveling the mount, but the goto and tracking seemed to work well. About 21:53MDT I finished and did a SkyAlign using Polaris, Alpheratz , and Nunki . I tested the alignment by going to M8, M20, and M31. I then went to NGC7331 (also known as Caldwell 30). The goto put it in the center of the FOV for the 32mm Plossl eyepiece. I then tried the 17mm and 13mm eyepieces. The overall view was dim. The galaxy itself appears as a slightly oval fuzzy. In the 32mm I could just make out two brighter spots in the galaxy. Going to 17mm and then 13mm confirmed them. Using averted vision really helped make them more visible. There weren't many stars visible in the surroundi...

 The sky started out tonight with about 40% cloud cover but was completely clear by 21:30 MDT. This was one of the better nights I've seen in a long time. Some showers have cleared a lot of the smoke. Transparency was good and seeing seemed very good, especially at zenith. The Teapot of Sagittarius was easily visible low in the south. I was pleasantly surprised. Between the smoke and sky glow I had not expected to be able to see it again before it disappeared for the season. NELM was probably approaching 6. After my eyes were dark adapted, all seven stars in the Little Dipper were visible. Star clouds and dark lanes in the Milky Way were clearly visible. Since I got a late start after dark, I didn't bother with setting up a telescope, just used the binoculars. These are a pair of Nikon 12x50 Action binoculars with a 5.5 degree FOV. I also set up the zero-g recliner so I could be steady ( and comfortable). I started by looking at Sagittarius since it.s low in the south and will...

Air quality today isn't very good. Wildfire smoke has AirNow.gov giving us a particulate reading of 164, which is in the unhealthy range.  Moonrise was officially 20:32:46 and the eclipse started about 20:33. The Moon cleared the Sapphires about 20 minutes later, so there was already a small bite out of the lower left side when it became visible. There were some low clouds in that direction, so at first I thought what I was seeing was just a section obscured by clouds. It took me a few minutes to realize it was actually the start of the eclipse I was seeing. At 20:55 I snapped a picture with my phone. It isn't great, and the image is brighter than it appeared to my eye. The smoke made it the illuminated portion of the Moon look almost like a blood Moon. The image is zoomed in to get a better look at the Moon.    The Moon was in and out of a couple of bands of clouds before clearing. I got out the DSLR, a Canon EOS Rebel T7. After trying to steady it by hand, I broke out ...

       Between wildfires in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, there has been pretty poor transparency. Add in a few smaller fires in the valley, and the skies have been pretty bad. August also seems to be a month where days start off clear but cumulus and thunderstorms start building in the afternoon, leading to cloudy evenings that often don't clear until the wee hours of the morning. Unfortunately most of the thunderstorms result in lightning starting fires but not enough moisture to really help.      The last couple of days have been an exception. Still some lightning but for a change had enough rain to make a significant difference. It rained most of the last couple of days and cleared most of the smoke out. I went outside around 23:00 MDT to see if it was clearing at all. It was mostly clear! I had brought the 12x50 binoculars out just in case, but no plan. I just scanned around enjoying the views.      Vega and Deneb were ...

Our library has a Starry Sky kit  supplied through the Montana Learning Center. It contains a Unihedron Sky Quality Monitor (SQM) , a small Planisphere, a small red flashlight, and some documentation Didn't set up a telescope tonight, but took the SQM from the libraries Starry Sky kit out to measure the skies brightness. The observatory walls are up, so I took readings from in there. The walls are 5' tall, so for the first readings I held the SQM just low enough in the by the pier to be sure no outside light. Three consecutive readings at zenith were 21.36, 21.37, and 21.35, for an average of 21.35 mpas. I then did three readings pointed at zenith from the top of the telescope, which is about 6” higher than the wall. These readings were 21.33, 21.27. and 21.28 for an average of 21.29 mpas. I pointed it about 20 º above the north horizon and it read 21.14 mpas. Pointed about the same above the south horizon it was 20.06 mpas. Our small town is 1 mile south of us, and there is...