June 11th, 2011

The clocked seemed to tick forever yet still,.. the sun wouldn't disappear completely. It wasn't before midnight when most of the stars could be seen and the last light of day disappeared. I waited impatiently since it was the first time I would take my telescope out since my first collimation one week ago. No collimation after using my telescope fifty-eight times! What was I thinking? That's the problem, I wasn't thinking. I was simply nervous about tampering with the telescope. Now? Well, I feel like a chump. It was relatively easy and was done within 30 minutes or less. With time i believe I can reduce this to 10.

I was also excited about this stargazing moment because I was having an "inauguration ceremony" for my new Celestron Ultima 2x Barlow lens which consisted of me simply breaking the seal of the box. The balloons and hoopla were all in my mind. The old Barlow I was using had developed a crack (top left) in it. I have no idea how this happened, I never dropped it and am tempted to believe that it was caused by the extreme difference of temperatures of going outside in -40 weather and back to 22 (inside the house). All I know is that I had been using it for months and it was about time I purchased a new one. Let's see here,....

The weather, after a long week of temperatures flirting with the freezing point, was quite comfortable. I knew exactly what my target would be: Saturn. With spring advancing fast, I was well aware that Saturn's moments of fame was coming to a close. With the collimation finally done and the new Barlow, I was in for a spectacular view! The bands were clearly marked with no haziness due to the collimation and this combined with my new Barlow gave me a crisp image. I felt like I was looking through a completely different telescope altogether! I would love to try share this with you but please believe me, the picture taken below does not do justice to what I saw:

I filmed this wonderful ringed planet for one of the last times this year and used the program RegiStax to stack the files (for some reason it always comes out small). My summer vacation is looming closer and I'm afraid I won't be able to do this while camping. The reason is very simple: I don't have any electricity out there! Well, we'll see, I will be touching "home base" many times during the following month and a half.

Isabelle