Bill's Sky

I have been disappointed with views of the planets in my C8 SCT ( Celestron 8" Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope). I am not seeing the level of detail it should provide. On Jupiter I can regularly see the North and South Equatorial Bands, but no detail in them and only occasional hints of other bands. There are several potential reasons for this, especially sky conditions. I live in a mountain valley between two significant mountain ranges. The highest range, the Bitterroots,  are just west of me and very rugged. This means there can be significant disturbances to the airflow above me affecting seeing . To test this out I wanted to set up my old 4.5" Newtonian Reflector on a German Equatorial Mount (GEM, or just "equatorial", for short). I had not used it in several years. This telescope is old enough that it uses 0.965" eyepieces. Over 20 years ago I remember using it in alt-az mode and seeing the Great Red Spot and more detail than I am getting now with the SCT. T...

Top image is sketch of M65 and 66 through 32mm Plossl. Bottom image is sketch of Jupiter through 25mm Plossl with 2x Barlow      The sky tonight is very bright. The Moon is about 75% illuminated. Transparency isn't real great, there is a layer of haze/light smoke over the valley. The layer is visible as you look at the horizon. NELM is about 3.5. I can barely make out Pherkad and 3 of the stars in the handle, including Polaris. Despite this I wanted to observe some of the Messier Objects in "Turn Left At Orion" while they are visible. This is the time of year when most of them are visible and I hoped to see quite a few before they are gone for the year. This is also the time of yer that a lot of amateur astronomers engage in a Messier Marathon . The goal is to observe all 110 objects in a single night. It's not for me, but a lot of people enjoy the challenge.  I had remounted the OTA on the pier before dark to get ready. My first targets were picked because they wou...

 19 March 2026 I walked outside at about 22:05 MDT just to see what the sky was like and if it might be worth taking the binoculars out. There had been a severe wind warning a few days ago so I had pulled the OTA off of the mount on the pier and put it away in the garage. Earlier in the day the sky conditions had been cloudy enough that I didn't expect much, but I was pleasantly surprised at how clear it had become. Just as I walked out to the driveway there was a bright orange meteor that tracked across a good part of the southern sky.It almost had the appearance of a fireball. The color was very striking. The track was angled toward the southeast. Because of that color it makes me wonder if I was actually seeing space debris burning up. Needless to say, I decided to go ahead and bring out the binoculars. These are 12x50 Nikons. In order to be stable and comfortable I brought out one of our "zero g" lounge chairs. Just today I had put the wrap that will be under the sidi...

  Full Moon 2 Mar 2026 Lunar Eclipse, 3 Mar 2026 Totality for the Lunar Eclipse was supposed to be about 04:38 MST on the morning of 3 March. I wasn't sure if I would be able to stay up to see it, or get up in time. From the altitude for the time, it looked like it would be touch and go for it being above the trees on the hill to the west. I did decide ahead of time that if I did watch it I would try to get some images with our DSLR, a Canon T7. We have a 75-300mm zoom lens for it. I went out early to try it out by taking pictures of the full moon. I initially accidentally took several images in JPEG format before I realized it, and reset the camera to RAW. Lens set at 300mm, F5.6, ISO 100, shutter speed to 1/250. The camera was on a tripod, and had it set for a 4 second delay since I was having to press the release on the camera. I decided to go ahead and go to bed, but the dogs woke me up about 03:30, so I decided to get up and watch the eclipse.  The Moon was further above ...

  I set up about 20:00 MST, I did a "Skyalign" using Mizar and Sirius for the first two stars, and then just a random star in between them for the third star. NELM is about 3-4 and transparency not great. The only star I could see in the Little Dipper was Polaris .  The first target was M1,The Crab Nebula ,  but I couldn't see it so shifted to M42, the Great Orion Nebula.   M43 , it's smaller companion was also in the field of view. Using the 25mm Plossl eyepiece the four stars at the heart of M42 were visible. The bright core of M43 was also visible. The dark lane to the core of M42 was very well defined. I sketched it using HB and 4B pencils and a smudge stick in my sketchbook/log.  Next target was M35  and I switched to the 32mm Plossl. This is an open star cluster about 2,800 light years away in the constellation Gemini. It consists of several hundred stars scattered over an area about equal to a full moon.I have tended to shy away from open clusters ...

   Just went out for a quick session. I haven't been able to observe Jupiter since opposition. It was very bright (as always) not long after sunset. I started out with the 32mm Plossl, then the 17mm Plossl. The 10 and 8 were to unstable, so I tried the 25mm with a 2x Barlow. That gives an effective eyepiece focal length of 12.5mm, yielding a magnification of 162.56x. The view was still wavering some, but had periods of stillness. This turned into one of the best nights viewing Jupiter in quite a while.Besides the north and south equatorial bands, I was able to pick out faint bands between them and the poles. There was also a very obvious bright white band just under the south equatorial band. When the seeing would steady down  could just make out some of the turbulence along the equatorial bands. More so in the north than the south band. Seeing came and went throughout the session.  At its best it  was about an Antoniadi III. Transparency was probably a 3-4 out ...