14 June 2024

 Last night was the first time in over a month that I set up the telescope. My plan was to study  the moon. By the time I did a 2 star alignment however, it had just g one into the treetops on top of the hill to our west. The sky was very bright. The Moon was almost 19% illuminated. I had the SQM kit checked out from the library and got an average reading of 20.7.A lot of fainter stars and faint DSO's were washed out.

I tried a couple of targets, and the goto was consistently off, slightly low and right. I redid the alignment using Sky-Align and it was much better. After that  I went t o Cassiopeia, specically gamma Cas. That is one of the AAVSO training stars, so I wanted to at least see if I could locate it and some comparison stars. With the 32mm eyepiece, only one star of similar apparent magnitude was in the field of view, at about the 7:30 position.

Even though I haven't been doing any observing, I have been busy with astronomy related activities. I completed the "Variable Star Classifications and Light Curves" course.  I am in week 2 of "How To Use VStar", the AAVSO tool for time variable data analysis and creation of light curves. It is bringing up a lot of statistics references that I want to review. I mentioned in a previous post how interesting it is that these classes  have participants that have such a wide range of expertise and are literall from all over the world. In fact, the instructor for the current class is an engineer in India. These classes are online asynchronous four week courses with weekly quizzes and a final quiz. The material is well organized and the instructors are very clear and helpful. I am already signed up for the next class, :Developing a Visual Observing Program". I'm really looking forward to being able to developing a program and starting to make usable observations.

Yesterday I made some progress in my planning for a roll off roof (ROR) observatory. I laid out a tentative location for a 10'x10' observatory. I then set T-posts at the corners leaving 5" above ground. I tied an old tarp to them on the south and east sides. The goal is to test the set up with 5' walls. I would like to get the walls low enough to Mercury when it's visible in the south, so about 10 degrees above the horizon. I also need to block out lights on the truss company about 1/2 mile south of us. The lights from town and a few houses a little further south aren't as bright, and no higher. The only other lights that are problematic are the Rodeo ground spotlights, about a mile south.

Clear Skies!