Finally for once in months it was a clear night when I can go observing. A good friend John Sparks smartly called a last minute star party last night. Three of us showed up to Lilly Bluff Overlook a little after 7 in the evening.
Unfortunately we did not see Mercury. There were a lot of high thin clouds that blocked Mercury. The Moon was a nice crescent so I brought up Virtual Lunar Atlas on my laptop and had a lot of fun identifying the craters. One can spend all night on just the Moon. Unfortunately the clouds thickened over the Moon which washed away the glorious sight. In fact the clouds pretty much covered the whole sky.
So was the star party ruined? No the Knoxville Observers is a fun group. My laptop has a dvd player so we watched an episode of Star Trek. When the show was over the skies became mostly clear. The night was never completely clear but most of the sky remained clear the rest of the night.
Now the fun begins. This was the first real time I had a chance to connect my scope to my laptop. Sure I messed around with it at home indoors and once at the cemetery but I would not really consider that real use. I think it will work great and matches my observing style. There were a few bugs to work out. First my laptop screen was too bright and not red enough. That will be easily remedied by getting a sheet of rubylith. The second is my scope looses connection with the computer from time to time and I have to reestablish connection by realigning stars. I do know you have to push a button on the panel every 15 minutes to keep it from shutting down. That wasn’t the problem because I did that. I don’t know the problem but I think it is mostly because I am new to all this. It will be easy to solve.
So what did I look at? Orion Nebula was up so of course I looked at that, can’t observe on a winter night without looking at M42. I also observed the Rosette Nebula, several open clusters in Monoceros and Orion and I toped off the evening with Saturn. Saturn was glorious and the seeing was great so a lot of detail was seen even the Enke division.
Darn I had to get up to go to work early in the morning so I left early but what a night.
