Bill's Sky

  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 ...