Gear:
Spent almost all night geeking with gear, and not in the fun way. I couldn’t seem to get stars centered even with a 32mm EP (granted I was using the f/11.2 Refractor) but still… An hour spent trying to align the goto with the refractor, geeking with finders and trying to get them aligned right… meh… not fun.
The old EQ5 clone worked well, with eyeball only alignment it tracked Orion, specifically the area of space with the horse-head nebula, perfectly for 3 hours.
I pulled the Konus out too and it did well on the moon, but I didn’t have a finder setup for it, so I didn’t try anything else.
One thing I forgot to mention, is that I started the evening out by assembling a new shelf for the garage, and moved all my gear out there. It needed to be better organized, I think this will work better in the end, I just need to figure out some dust protection. I’ll post pictures later.
Seeing:
Not bad actually. 125x Jupiter (203mm scope) looked shimmery but crisp otherwise, with occasional picture quality views. However, the moon pretty much made DSO’s of any type extinct. it was a very grey sky tonight, not much black at all, all the Messier objects I saw the other night with 1/4 moon, never showed up with 1/2 moon tonight.
Observations:
Well… Not much actually. I spent all night tracking where the horse-head nebula should be, Had the correct EP, the mount was tracking perfectly, yet the sky was just too grey to make anything out. Even the Orion Nebula was hard to see when zoomed in.
I saw quite a bit of detail on Jupiter tonight, including some thin banding near the poles, and even what looked like some turbulence on the main orange bands. No GRS tho.
Moon was as expected.
Overall I spent too much time farting with gear and not enough time viewing. Plus my back is hurting so I may take a break until Saturn is up. I think I’m done chasing Orion till the fall.