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 ...