| date | Viewing logs |
| 4/8/2015 | During waning daylight hours I calibrated the finder scope, and tested functionality by viewing outdoor lights at Tinker AFB (.9mile dist). Found Jupiter and Venus, tiny BB sized in 10mm EP, stripes mostly indestingusible. Addy couldn’t see stripes, but Shelly could. 1hr viewing. |
| 04/092015 | Researched targets in preperation for a long night of viewing. Found Jupiter and Venus, same results as previous viewing. Looked for some DSO’s and came up empty, but did look at several different stars. Tried to photograph jupiter with iphone and my S5 but couldn’t get it consistently into the camera frame. fun trying tho. did not find saturn. 2hrs total viewing |
| 4/10/2015 | Got a better view of both Jupiter and Venus. Jupiter is now pea sized (2x + 3x + 25mm {156x}) with good contrast, stripes clearly visible. Played with barlow and EP combos and found the 25mm + 2x + 3x easiest to track and focus, but the 2x + 10mm gave best picture. Venus was again a disapointment, small bright light with phase appearent but not well focused. Tried to find some DSO’s but still don’t really know how to find them. Tried again to get pictures of the bigger better jupiter but same camera focus / framing issues. Did not find saturn. 2hrs viewing |
| 04/142015 | none |
| 04/152015 | Got a fantastic view of Jupiter at zenith with moons, clear stripes, and best detail yet (6mm + 2x barlow). Venus was in the west, again, hard to focus it at high magnifications and the west was bad seeing as well. Despite bad seeing in the lower western sky I found the smaller (upper) bit of orions nebula (25mm + 2x barlow). found saturn later that night low on the SE horizon, Bad seeing, featurless milky disk with ring 2x+6mm (resembling galelleo’s handles), sharp focused edges tho. got a better view with moons using 2x+10mm. couldn’t find any other DSO’s despite trying. |
| 4/17/2015 | NONE |
| 4/19/2015 | Start off by getting my first glimpse of the moon (waxing crescent) tonight. Fantastic despite bad seeing. Used a Bahtinov gadget to get a better focused view of venus. Spend copious time viewing orions nebula, but again it was very faint and greyish, no color. 4 stars in a cup formation, with 3 stars in line off to the right. Tried to catch jupiters big red spot, but couldn’t get that fine of detail. seeing was ultimately pretty bad. ~1hr viewing time. |
| 4/23/2015 | NONE |
| 4/24/2015 | wasn’t able to get a good view of Jupiter’s details, nor the moon’s really. Weather was just not good for seeing. But we tried until the clouds completely took over. Took a few pics with new rig. 30min viewing(ish) |
| 4/25/2015 | Moon, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn. Spent significant time viewing all the mentioned solar objects. Seeing was good in early evening but got worse in the AM hours. Was able to get a grainy photo of jupiter with two primary bands, several nice shots of the moon, and a white blob for saturn. Will need to try a better camera next time. spent an hour or so using the 2x + 6mm lense to get nice 200+ magnification views of most of the same objects. the Moon is just WOW… bout 4hrs viewing. |
| 4/30/2015 | Tried again to get some good photo’s using my sony compact camera. Was able to get some decent images of the moon, but without a remote trigger everything was too bouncy. 30min viewing. |
| 4/30/2015 | Tried again with my galaxy s5 camera. Much better results overall but still needs work. 45min viewing. |
| 4/30/2015 | NONE |
| 5/1/2015 | Early Morning viewing of saturn returned more of the same. Bad seeing, well defined, yet terribly washed out pale yellow shape. 15min viewing. |
| 5/5/2015 | NONE |
| 5/7/2015 | NONE |
| 5/10/2015 | Seeing sucked, but star filled skies looked great. Jupiter, venus, saturn, and some wide field scrolling for nothing perticular. Fun, but frustrating lack of seeing. Tried 500x on jupiter but couldn’t get more than a bright ball. Still very bright tho for a partly cloudy night. The Konus will see jupiter even through moderate clouds. very nice. But the glowing halo is very disconerting. Bout 90min of viewing. |
| 5/11/2015 | Tonight I set up both scopes side by side in the dark shadow of my house. I took beads on jupiter with both and the image quality is strikingly different. The halo effect seen on the konus is absent on the orion. Further, I found it hard to get stars into focus with the konus. Shelly agreed that something is wrong with the konus scope. bout 2hrs of viewing |
| 5/12/2015 | Konus: Jupiter appeared ok at first, but the glow came back with more viewing, saturn had a nasty glow too. Better views overall, but still not crisp like the 130mm. I really can’t tell that the ring did any good, it appears as though it did on Jupter to start, but then the glow came back. I used only my 8x-24x zoom with a barlow so 50x to 250x mag viewing on all objets. saturn wouldn’t come into focus above 200x. bout 90min viewing. |
| 5/14/2015 | NONE |
| 5/17/2015 | Not great seeing, but acceptable. Found the best power for jupiter is x160(ish). 6mm in konus (167) and 8mm barlowed in 133mm (163) give a very similar view of Jupiter. I think the felt ring helped a bit, as both are acceptable views, but the 200mm is showing much more atmosphere. Used the Dob to Star surf a bit. lots of stars visible on a grey background. Need to find a dark site. |
| 5/18/2015 | Acceptable seeing overall. 130mm scope gave good views of Jupiter, venus, and Saturn. I managed my best view of Venus to date, very pretty well defined half “moon” phase. Jupiter looked as good as it always does at that low of power, and saturn looked the same as well. Used the Konus to do more star surfing, saw two fast moving stars (probably sattelites), but otherwise just normal stars, no fuzzies. Shelly spent significant time with the 130mm looking at the planets. She’s starting to learn how to use the GEM style mounts & finders. 🙂 bout 2hrs viewing. |
| 5/19/2015 | NONE |