Bill's Sky

  Transparency tonight is not the greatest, but is tolerable for most of the sky. USFS is doing a prescribed burn about 10 miles southwest of us, so there is a pretty good layer of smoke to the south. There is a thinner haze of smoke over the entire valley. The Moon is shining through the smoke. I got set up about 20:00MDT. One thing I have started doing is to take the OTA (optical tube  assembly) off of the mount and carry them out separately. This is much less awkward to carry. It also makes it much easier to level the mount, which is critical for getting good alignment. It seems that starting out with the mount and OTA level, and pointed close to north when starting, helps the alignment process. My first target was M2 , a globular cluster approximately 37,000 light years away in the constellation Aquarius, has a diameter of about 150 light years, and contains over 150,000 stars. I started out using the 32mm eyepiece, for about 63.5x. This also gives the widest view of any o...

Went out about 21:00 MDT and set up on the driveway, just far enough  past the west end of the wood shop to block the floodlights on the side of the truss companies new building. Successfully used Sky Align. Just a quick note about conditions. The temperature was down to about 50F when I started with relatively high humidity. It si getting cool enough at night that many people are lighting their wood stoves in the evening and early morning. In addition the county burn ban was lifted last week, so there have been a lot of people burning slash piles, and USFS controlled burns. This has resulted in a light layer of smoke over the entire valley. My first target, mostly to check alignment and tracking was Saturn. Seeing was about 2 to 2.5/5 ( I am going to start using the scale from "The Backyard Astronomers Guide"). Had several moments of clear seeing, and otherwise minimal blurring with the edge of the planetary disc "dancing" a little. I started with the 25mm eyepiece...