How can this be? I have a couple days off and the skies are clear!!!
I set the Nexstar 8GPS out on the deck of my home on Wind Dancer Knoll about
sunset and began to assemble the many pieces of equipment it takes to make
that scope go(to...haha). Once that was done it was plenty dark and Jupiter
was rising, making the king planet a perfect target for aiming the finder
scope and the Telrad. Then it was off to do the alignment. AHHH...back to
Jupiter and some tracking just to gaze with the new 12mm Radian. The view was
a
little wavy, but at least two bands with some gray-tan colar were visible as
were a couple moons
Then it was off to Saturn. I was darn near looking straight up, but there
it was. And the Cassini division was very apparent. I am lucky that the
NS8GPS's fork mount allows the scope to clear the base with diagnonal in place.
While I was is in the neighborhood I was off to M42. The Trapezium was very
bright seemingly lighting up the whole nebula!
My journey next took me to the Beehive Cluster...faint and fuzzy, but
visible. OOPS. Tripped over the extension cord to which the telescope AC is
plugged. Power off!! NOOOO. Time to do another GPS alignment. Failed.
Time
to do it again. Failed. Seems gloves cause one to hit the wrong buttons on
the hand paddle. Third time was the charm, the alignment succeeded and I was
on my sky trip again.
I traveled to the Double Cluster and M81 and M82 (in Galaxy Rob's honor).
Then on the NS8 hand controlled I switched to double stars. Hey, no one told
me Castor is a double star!!! Even with seeing as it was I could split that
double!!
At one point I stopped and headed back to Jupiter to try my hand at web cam
photography. I set the scope up to track Jupiter again and fiddled with the
laptop computer for a half hour, but nothing showed on its screen from the
ToUcam. I played with every control on K2CCD I could think of and still
nothing. The little red light on the camera even was lit up...Another
night....
About this time I was really cold, so I fixed a cup of hot chocolate. I set
my cup out on the deck rail and a little drink slopped out and froze on the
wood!
I finished the night on the Moon. Now we all know the Moon is real brigh..
well blinding. But I swear it was brigher than ever. I used that 12 mm
Radian and could not fit the whole Moon in view. I switched to a 25mm Plossl
and
still couldn't see the whole thing. That Pentax XL 40mm is a wonderful
thing. The detail was like I had never seen before. I lost my breath in a
amazement!!
Last night was first light for the William Optics 2" SCT diagonal. It is
one fine piece of equipment. I also have purchased one to use with my
Stellarvue 85mm Apo.
I packed up about 10:30 pm because I was getting pretty chilly. And when I
went to bed my dreams were filled with wonderful astro sights!!!
Clear skies to all...
Regards from Almost Heaven West Virginia....
Linda