Bill's Sky

  Got set up about 22:15 MDT. IJust did a SkyAlign using three bright stars. First was Arcturus, but I forgot to note the other two. That's something I need to be sure to do from now on. NELM was about 3.5-4. Stars not twinkling very much st zenith, but twinling more as you looked lower. Transparency was about 3/5 and got worse as the night progressed. I initially thought it was possibly moisture in the air, but humidity was only about 34% and dew neve formed on any surfaces. It turned out to be smoke haze. By 08:00 the next morning the smoke in the valley was thick enough to smell and there was a haze over everything. The Moon was about 17% waxing. I wanted to observe it before it went behind the trees to  the west so it was my first target. I started out using the 25mm Plossl eyepiece (81x), and worked north along the terminator from the south edge. After getting a good overall view I went to Mare Crisium. While scanning around it a detail I hadn't noticed before caught my e...

I first went out about 21:15MDT to see what the sky was like since the forecast wasn't too promising.  I thought I saw a possible Aurora to the north and northwest. I got the night vision scope out to see and it turned out to just be skyglow on some thin clouds.  It was about an hour after sunset and several hours until moonrise. The sky glows from Hamilton (about 16 miles north) and Darby (1 mile south) were quite a bit larger than usual. There were also high thin clouds to the west but Jupiter was still clear of them. The stars weren't twinkling very much at zenith, but transparency wasn't very good. NELM was about 4. Haze made larger than usual halos around lights on the truss company just under half a mile away and on lights in town a mile away. I would rate the transparency about 3/5. I decided to try it anyway. A quick note about those lights. They are south of me and the walls of my observatory are 5ft tall so I can get as close to the southern horizon as practical f...

I have been disappointed with views of the planets in my C8 SCT ( Celestron 8" Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope). I am not seeing the level of detail it should provide. On Jupiter I can regularly see the North and South Equatorial Bands, but no detail in them and only occasional hints of other bands. There are several potential reasons for this, especially sky conditions. I live in a mountain valley between two significant mountain ranges. The highest range, the Bitterroots,  are just west of me and very rugged. This means there can be significant disturbances to the airflow above me affecting seeing . To test this out I wanted to set up my old 4.5" Newtonian Reflector on a German Equatorial Mount (GEM, or just "equatorial", for short). I had not used it in several years. This telescope is old enough that it uses 0.965" eyepieces. Over 20 years ago I remember using it in alt-az mode and seeing the Great Red Spot and more detail than I am getting now with the SCT. T...