18 September 2025

     August was pretty much a bust for observing. On many of the days the sky would start out clear and then by mid afternoon clouds would start building, and not dissipate until well after midnight. Thunderstorms and lightening with high fire danger sparked a lot of  (thankfully) smaller wildfires that were out or controlled quickly. There were two large fires south of us about 30-40 miles that kept the sky smoky for a lot of the month. An occasional thunderstorm would clear it for a day or so. The few clear nights we did get, I didn't bother setting up the telescope, but would go out just naked eye observing or maybe carry binoculars out with me. I did observe M31 with the binoculars a couple of times.  These nights helped preserve what sanity I still possess.

     Tonight was different. The sky was clear, but transparency wasn't real great. NELM was probably 3-4.  I had done a small astronomy presentation the night before at the library, so my 8SE was still broken down in the car. I didn't bother setting it up, but I have an old Jason Model 306-S7 refractor. It's has a 60mm aperture with 700mm focal length. A funky mirror diagonal (not shown in the picture) that moves from 90 to 45 degrees . Eyepiece diameter is 0.965". 

 

 Jason 306-S7 (sorry for messy garage)

 

     I have never really tried to use this, even though I've had it for about 10 years. I decided to give it a quick try. I set it up quickly, and didn't even bother to hook up the spreader. That obviously added to unsteadiness. The cheap plastic finder couldn't come to focus, but actually turned out to be useful. Amazingly it was still close to alignment with the telescope. The images through the diagonal were fairly sharp. I also tried using it without the diagonal.  I was using a 0.965", 20mm Huygens eyepiece.  I have a 0.965-1.25" adapter, and also tried a 17mm Plossl. I had trouble bringing the Plossl to focus, but part of that may have been  how unsteady the mount was and how difficult it was to keep any an object in the field of view. My impression is that the optics may be fine, but it will need a better mount to be usable. There are a lot of people using these small old refractors successfully, so I will probably look into doing something about the mount.

     After putting that away, I got out the lounge chair ans 15x50 binoculars. Where I set up, to avoid some lights to my south, I was mostly looking northeast and east. As noted earlier, transparency wasn't real great. I spent time looking around Cassiopeia, and just cruising the Milky Way overhead. Spent a little time looking at Polaris and it's surroundings. By then the Pleiades had come up over the Sapphires far enough to get a decent look. I haven't had a chance to do any sketching for quite while, so I made a quick sketch. I believe I caught most of the visible stars. There were a few that I didn't add because they were on the very edge of visibility. I started at about 22:50 MDT and took about 20 minutes, going back and foth between the binoculars and sketch pad.