There was clear skies all day but now that the sun is down it is clouding up, AGAIN! We are getting one clear night a week if we are lucky. Hopefully I will be able to see the comet before the moon comes up AND it doesn’t cloud up. I have to decide whether or not to take the scope out to cool down.

Later on….

I did take the scope out and was actually able to pick out Comet Machholz with the naked eye, although just barely and I do mean just, but sure enough I did. It was a good sight with the scope, it is quite diffuse but a fairly well defined coma can be seen, seemed like it was an off color almost a green, but it could have been my imagination too I suppose.

Lots of fooling around, M42 and M45, all the usual. I also did some fiddling with the autostar on the little scope.

I did get a good look at Saturn and 2 of it’s attending moons, Titan and Rhea. Rhea was kind of tough, but not difficult when I used averted vision. There should have been a couple of more I could see, but no luck. The Saturn “shine” was pretty bright and maybe that caused some problems but more likely the shine was enhanced by fog on the lens, well possibly (sounds good).

I got a Meade ETX70AT in my sock for Christmas, yes it is a big sock and Santa was very nice.

So I took it out tonight as this was the first clear sky we have had since.

Here is the report….Excellent Optics, very good and very clear.

The moon was up and is just past full so overpowered all but he brightest stars. I used only the 25mm lens and a 2x Barlow. I didn’t use the AutoStar controller because it was cold and I didn’t figure it would work. I can say manually finding things (even without the setting circles) is quite easy. I only spent about 45 minutes outside because it is only about zero. The 7 sisters were a grand sight! While I didn’t see the comet (moon too bright??) it is going to be a dazzling site on Jan 7 or 8th when the comet is close to the sisters. I saw two objects that I have to identify, the Orion Nebula although the moon light kept it from being everything it could be. The moon of course was a sight I checked out and it was very good and deserving of some more detailed viewing. It was too cold to stay out too much longer, it is only about zero F. Cold enough in fact to turn the moisture that formed when I brought the scope in to turn to ice!

Object ID’s the first is Aldebaran a K5
the second is Elnath which is a B7, but sure looks orange to me…..

Santa was certainly nice to me! He left a Meade ETX70AT in my sock, it was a big sock (!) so will be spending a little time today putting that together.

It doesn’t look like the weather is going to cooperate very well with cloudy skies and snow forecast for tonight. Monday night is supposed to be only partly cloudy so maybe that will be the first light.

Been cloudy for the past couple of days. It is nice and clear today and will be tonight. I plan on looking around but only for a short time, the temp at 1 pm is almost zero degs F (it hasn’t gotten that warm yet!), and the temp well plunge once the sun and wind goes down. I’d take -10 with no wind over 0 with wind any day.

It took a couple of weeks to get one but this was it. Checked out M42 in pretty good detail, although low magnification, it was
quite good tonight and I could make out 3 stars of the trapezium with out too much difficulty. A very nice site indeed.

The moon was shining brightly even if it was only about 1st quarter. I suppose that did hold down seeing a little. I think if there was no moon I could have seen Comet Machholz with no magnification, but I did easily find it with magnification. It has moved quite a bit since the other night when I first saw it. It is from what I can tell about a mag 5.5 and one thing other than the moon that might be keeping from an easy naked eye object is that it is diffuse, if it were more concentrated it would probably be easier. At any rate as it gets higher in the sky over the next couple of weeks it is supposed to grow about a magnitude in brightness so it should be viewable with the naked eye with little problem.

I almost thought I could see it tonight with averted vision. I forgot to look for Comet Temple 1 which is near the polar star supposedly but I don’t
think it is very bright so don’t know if the binocs would have picked it out anyway.

Warm is a bit relative true enough, because at the moment “warm” is about 30 degrees F. But got some looking around in though before it clouded up again. The seven sisters were a nice sight early on, that’d be about 6pm. Things to the west were obscured by clouds. The moon was a good sight until it too got to the western part of the sky.

Went out about 7 pm to see if Orion was high enough, well actually I was looking to see Comet Machholz again, but the sky had pretty much become overcast. The only part of the sky that was anywhere near viewable was the north to northwest but even there it was starting to haze over pretty quickly. Did some looking around there in the area of where Vega is. Not much there except some what I am calling “minor” stars, I am going to look at them in the sky software I have, IF, I can identify the ones I saw and I don’t have much to go on. I do know they are not very bright so I will be able to get an idea of the magnitude of what is out in the area if nothing else.

Back to the moon for a sec. When I checked it out the first time about 5 pm, I was treated a great example of air movement disturbing the image. Created a wavy moon for a little while. The moon was a good sight anyway.