A Gorgeous night

[The Warthog]

Against all expectation, last night was completely, and I do mean completely, clear. From the time my daughter picked me up at work in Hamilton the moon was completely free and unobstructed. However, I had to go to the church, where my daughter was guest speaker at a dinner, drive back and forth running errands for my wife, and finally got to go home and make supper (I wasn't invited) and set up my scope. But then, I couldn't look through it, because I was making chips in the frying pan and thought I should hang around, as I like my house. After supper I got to put my scope on the moon, and, of course being nearly full (the moon, not me, I'm a light eater) everything was pretty washed out, except for a very little detail along the terminator.

Back to the church, to hear my daughter's speech, then back home eventually, and spent two hours lookng at the few things I could see. The skies were mag 2 or so. I could only see the brighter of the two stars in the end of the little dipper, and I could only see the sword of Orion using averted vision. Looked around the moon for a while longer, as the full moon has its own charms. Once you get it focused, and get the brightness under conroll, the brighter spots on the moon give it a jewelled look. Aristarchus looks like a splash of Liquid Paper dropped on a chart, and Tycho is the king of all he surveys. I think Tycho Brahe won the crater lottery when he had it named after him. Copernicus stands out, too because of its rays. The maria look soft, even with the luminosity reduced by a filter and an aperture mask.

Turned my attention to Saturn, and got a sharp image at 112x and then at 150x. At 225x, the image was hard to focus, but if I watched long enough, while juggling the focus knob and the RA cable, I could see hints of the Cassini division. Went on to Praesepe, then to Orion, and just scouted about at 72x or so. Looked at Mars, but didn't get any detail off it.

I went back inside and lit one of the small cigars I got for Christmas, came back outside, and put the scope back on the moon, and just sat on a barstool watching it do nothing in particular for about 25 minutes. It's like a meditation to do that. I wasn't sure exactly when full moon would occur, or even if it was last night, but I would like to watch it through the moment of full moon to see the terminator disappear on one side, and reappear on the other.

I was packing up just as my wife and daughter came home. I put my 8mm ep back in the scope, and showed them Saturn. They were pretty impressed just to be able to see the rings. I had wondered whether my inability to see Cassini's division was the scope, or my ruined eyesight, but my daughter, who has the eyes of a hawk, wasn't able to see it, either. I need a bigger scope.

The star images were sharp, hard dots, since I collimated my scope, and I inspected Sirius and the brighter stars of Orion for twinkling, and there wasn't any, so the seeing was good, but the LP and possibly the transparency sucked.

All in all, a good night.

[MartinB]

You transported me there WH. Great report. Watch that chip pan

Martin

[lunator]

WH

nice report.

Glad you got out.

Should have got all those people who were there to listen too your daughter to come round and look through your scope at Saturn.

Cheers

Ian

[daz]

Excellent report WH

Sounds like a good night, especially with home-made chips

[The Warthog]

No, I actually wasn't in the mood to sketch. I just wanted to gawk. It was about 10 degrees last night, though, so I could have sketched very comfortably. It occured to me that Tycho would have been a nice target.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday may offer some decent nights, but it is going to get much colder this weekend.

[The Warthog]

Thanks for sharing WH, clear skies have been a long time coming hey?

They have, but if you're trying to sound Canadian like me, it's "eh?" not "Hey?", eh?

I just looked at the forecast, it is 14 just now. Celsius! It's going to rain all night, but tomorrow it's going to be -5 to -11, and again through Monday, but then midweek it's supposed to climb up to 8 degrees again. It's spoiling all my fun boasting about how cold the winters are. I'm saving lots on the heating, though.