Zenith viewing w/ a dob :(

For all it's aperture, there's not much fun to be had attempting to view at the Zenith with a dobsonian mount. Lots of moving around the scope to get the spot that works, but I did see what I was after.

Albireo - Double star in Cygnus was a very pretty orange and blue/green set. They are cherished by telescope folks and I can see why. The contrast is beautiful.

Dumbbell Nebula - once again my hopes are slightly out of alignment w/ reality. Nice round blur, but no color that I could discern. It's fairly large at least and made me want to visit my dark site to see what it "really" looks like. In any case I think I'm going to have to break down and get an astro-photography rig before much longer ($$ willing).

Jupiter - big and bright, but the seeing wasn't too great as it swam in and out of focus.

Uranus - tonight I found it without any help :) nice blue dot passing through my eyepiece

Neptune

I just spent an 1.5 hours looking for one target. Neptune is so small in my telescope that I had to spend about 15 minutes looking at it to make sure it was a planet. It was a circle, but not a very big one. It definitely had a blue tint to it (similar to this picture someone made w/ a 10" SCT and stacking multiple images. I wish I'd taken it, but this gives you a pretty decent idea of what I saw.



Right now it's located between Aquarius and Capricorn, but it's not a straight shot from anywhere in particular, so I had to really stretch my star-hopping abilities to get to it. Anyway... I'm beat down and proud to say I've seen every planet (now that Pluto has been demoted). I'm proud and think I've justified my hobby to some degree :)

Cassiopeia and Friends

Tonight being the Saturday night of Labor Day was the best night I've ever had in Longview. Perfect skies. Not necessarily dark enough, but very clear. It makes sense that now that I have a dark site to visit (1.5 hours away) my backyard wound finally give me some decent nights :)



M52 in Cass - just about perfect in 15mm w/ the XT10 - nicely framed w/ a little border of black around it.



Eta_Cassiopeiae - Double in Cass that most closely resembles our sun.



Jupiter in both 70mm refractor and 254mm reflector was bright and beautiful. I have to say through the refractor it's slightly nicer... just clearer, but not necessarily brighter. Makes me want a big refractor :)



Uranus - near Jupiter tonight, up and to the right. The only reason I could tell it was a planet was at higher magnification it became a circle instead of staying a pinprick (like stars do).



Andromeda Galaxy / M31 - Finally a faint fuzzy that I originally saw with my 5" Celestron. Bright in 15mm, but always blurry. Makes me want an imaging setup :) there's always Christmas



Double Cluster - perfect through 32mm - nice and bright with distinct stars.

Perfect and on a Holiday no less!

I've never seen it this clear in my area. Ever. :) Now if I can just get some viewing this weekend (Labor Day...)

View from the eyepiece - Moon

New Observing Blog

This is my new blog for stargazing. I've pretty much decided that's all I'll end up blogging about unless the kids do some particularly funny/frightening. In any case I'll most likely be moving old posts from my old blog to here that are Astronomy based. They'll be older, but have my observances for the past year, so I want them all in one place.

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..