Sess.#286 7:30-9:30pm lim mag=4.0 seeing=5/10 Mostly Cloudy
Set up the SCT-8" in the back yard after shovelling the snow and ice
off some of the flagstone. Excellent setup with the new foldout
observing table, charts, etc. However, the weather did not co-operate
and I got to observe only for 30 minutes out of two hours before I
gave up.
Saturn - looking out Westward from Orleans, over Ottawa, Saturn was
churning so much that I could not distinguish cassinni's division.
This is in sharp contrast to the views I've gotten from the West end
of Ottawa.
Jupiter - had two moons very close to each other and the other two far
on opposite side. Could only see some banding and polar caps on the
planet itself.
Castor - alpha Geminorum - this is a bluesih white double star with
one being slightly brighter than the other. When near overhead, I
magnified alot to check the seeing - the diffraction pattern of an in
focus star showed the seeing to be no better than 5/10.
Gamma Leonis - A very nice and very yellow pair of stars in Leo.
Similar brightness. The colour is very different than Castor.
Did not have an opportunity to calibrate my reticle eyepiece to the 3X
barlow yet. Cloud banks kept giving me only short 10 minute
opportunities to observe. After two hours of playing that game and
getting only three short observing windows between clouds, I packed it
in.
Tech Note - I had felt some concerns about my polar alignment skills
in Kanata. Tonight, the polar alignment, using my 1-minute
finderscope approach, turned out fairly accurate. When I placed the
illuminated reticle over a Gamma Leo afterwards, there was no drift at
all east or west for 3 minutes, and in that same amount of time, only
20 seconds drift northward. Half the field of view (from center to
rim) for that eyepiece is 10 arc minutes, so that means a target would
stay in the eyepiece for more than an hour. Good to know nothing's
wrong with the scope.
Roland
