Tonight was a little bit of an exercise in frustration. Starting about 20:0 0MDT I tried setting up the tripod and leveling it before attaching the mount and then the telescope. In the process, I bumped the tripod and knocked it out of level. Grrrrr! I eventually got everything set, and was able to successfully bring targets into the field of view. I am really looking forward to getting a permanent pier put together! Skyglow was pretty bright despite the Moon not being up. Seeing was fair. Transparency wasn't great, with a NELM (Naked Eye Limiting Magnitude) of about 4. The first target was M2 , a globular cluster in Aquarius. It is about 55,000 light years away and contains about 150,000 stars. I was only able to make out a couple of individual stars on the periphery by using averted vision. Second set of targets wee from the AAVSO class. Z Andromeda and AC Hercules. Hercules was just past zenith. That is a difficult angle for me to see with the red dot ...
We finally had a clear night so I could get in at least a little observing. I really wanted to get a chance to use my new sketching tools, I took the pad of black paper, white and grey Prismacolor pencils, and some regular sketching pencils to use in my journal. I was able to start observing around 21:45MDT. I used the SkyAlign alignment process. For some reason the goto function was consistently off low and left. Using the ed dot finder brought targets into the field of view (FOV). The Moon was at about 39% full and already pretty bright, high in the west. Transparency I would rate as about a 6 out of 10, and seeing was pretty steady. Since the light from the moon was washing out a lot of stars, and I am still working on my Lunar list, I decided to observe the moon first. I settled on the group of craters Theophilus, Cyrillus, and Catharina. Theophilus is the northernmost, then Cyrillus, then Catharina...
Sky was looking clear so I set up about 19:30 MST. Plan was to just look at the Moon and then Jupiter. I used Solar System Alignment with Jupiter for the alignment target. I messed up and put the date in as Dec 12 instead of Dec 10! I didn't realize what I had done until later. GoTo was obviously off because of that, but tracking was good and I was able to scan over to the target, Moon was at 77%, very bright, and was the first target for observation. Just after I got aligned and moved to the Moon a layer of cloud started moving in from the northwest. it eventually mostly obscured Jupiter. It kept moving SE and didn't affect the Moon. I initially had the 32mm eyepiece in just to scan and look for interesting features that might catch my eye. I didn't have the Moon filter in to start, but it was so bright it left an after image in my eye when I looked away. I put the filter in to make it easier to look at. I started looking along the terminator and the rim of Montes Jura ...
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