I couldn't believe it, I had waited till 10:00 pm and I still didn't have the inky black skies needed to see most of the stars except the brighter ones in each constellations. Deep-sky objects were clearly NOT going to be on the table for this particular night! I will have to take a strong coffee before doing any serious stargazing from now on as spring approaches summer! Since the planets outshone everything else, I decided to concentrate on them.

Like usual, my first gaze fell on Venus. When the moon is not around, it is still outshining everything else! Once again, its clarity surprised me and I took the picture you see at the bottom. I am quite proud of it!

I used my 26 mm Plössl with my 2X Barlow lens which gave me a magnification of 76.9x.

I then, using the same magnification, took my chances with Mars once more but like the previous night, it offered little. In its defense, it's not because he wasn't picture-friendly but simply because the planet is slowly receding away. My last stop was Saturn and it surely didn't disappoint! Using my Sony point-and-shoot, I caught a short 20 second video file. Once by my computer, I utilized the RegiStax 6 program to stack the individual frames. The result gave me the following! I couldn't be happier!

Tonight, I'm going to stretch the limits of this procedure. If the length of the video file creates better images then we'll see what I can capture by filming the planet for an extensive period of time! This is very tricky because a Dobsonian telescope isn't the most stable when it comes to photography. I should accept my equipment's limitations but then, it's just a "tongue-tied, twisted earth bound misfit" as I am right?

Isabelle