Scorpio (A)

Tonight I paid a visit to Amy's parents house to feed their dog. Mostly I was just wanting to take advantage of some dark sky on a clear night since it's been weeks since I got any decent nights for telescope time. I didn't have the guts to lug the big one, so I took my 70mm (basically one half of my binoculars) and tried it out. With a dark sky it's pretty awesome. I can see wanting a slightly nicer grab-n-go scope, but this one isn't bad at all.



I had a nice view to the South so tonight I spent some time getting to know Scorpio. It's actually a very cool looking constellation and has quite a few nice DSO's near it.



M4 - looked nice through the scope and then with binos was easy (keeping in mind that my binos are 70mm too - small scope, big binoculars).


Scorpious Jewel Box w/ binos was very pretty... two globs of stars on top of one another.



M7 (right) - looked like a 3d X made of stars almost, lots to look at and I spent quite a while looking at it.


M6 - not as nice as M7, but nice with binos


M8 - Lagoon Nebula - as nice as Orion's Nebula (nearly) :)


M20 - Easy to spot with lots of clusters around


And lastly... tonight I saw the Milky Way for the first time and recognized it - faint, but unmistakable :)


Lagoon Nebula (M8) below..

Jupiter (A)

Stacked w/ Registax - this is about 36 frames of an HD video stacked up looking through two filters (polarizer and blue). Not mind blowing, but not terrible either...

Telescope Mods (A)

Tonight is the first time in probably a month that I've had the sky and time to do any looking. Here are the mods I've made since last time...

• New 15mm Televue Plossl EP (so now I've got a 32 and 15)
  
• Flocked Tube - Amy helped me apply the synthetic black velvety stuff to the inside of the scope to completely kill any stray light. Seems to work ok.
  
• Cooling fan - new fan mounted on the objective mirror (one on the bottom) is supposed to help get it to the right temp which helps in seeing.
  
• Milk jug washers on the base - these allow the telescope to pivot on the center and move very easily (way easier than stock). Makes minute adjustments less of a study in chip opening (narrow window of force between opening the bag and making it explode in a shower of chips).
  

80° and Humid enough to swim around. I took a chance and ran to Walmart to get a ThermaCELL butane mosquito repellant device. It's about the size of an old wall mount phone and emits some sort of odorless thing that runs them off (at least for 15' square). Seemed to work ok, but I got a few bites I know... maybe I should have given it 15 min to get started before diving in.



Spent some time looking at M57 - the Ring Nebula. Huge in the 15mm w/ the barlow in place (240x magnification) - man I wish I had a camera to show that off :)



the Summer Triangle is easy to see looking up at 11pm towards the East - formed by Deneb, Vega and Altair.



Since it was fogging on the moon I ended up looking at the Double Double in Lyra (two sets of double stars).



Man I can't wait till winter and less cloudy nights along w/ fewer mosquitos :)