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The first observing session at our new house! It's great to be able to carry out the already setup telescope instead of hauling it down a flight of stairs and
assembling it in the dark. I took the scope out a couple of hours before I actually started observing. This allowed it to cool down to the ambient temperature so that I didn't get
distortions from heat rising out of the tube.
It was worth it. The views were great! I started with Jupiter. The two main, dark cloud bands (SEB and NEB) were clearly visible and appeared a little
mottled. I wasn't able to make out individual festoons but I could tell the bands weren't a solid color. I was able to use my 4.8mm Nagler for 191x without problem. The seeing was pretty
good. In order from left to right were: Callisto, Ganymede, IO, and Europa.
Next I moved on to Saturn. The rings were beautiful and I saw some satellites to it's left. I didn't lookup which ones they were. Again, the 4.8mm
Nagler provided a nice view. The 2.5mm Vixen (366x) was too blurred by the seeing to be worthwhile. Don't let anyone tell you that magnification is everything. It isn't. Seeing clearly is
what matters.
My old favorite, the Double Cluster was next. It seems like this is the only thing I ever see! It wasn't as awe inspiring as it is from a dark site but
it was still a nice view.
Finally, I observed M103. At times, there seemed to be an almost kite-like pattern to the stars in the center of the cluster. I thought this was the
first time I'd seen M103 but a check of my observing software (Deepsky) revealed that I saw it once before on July 19, 1998. It's not the most impressive cluster but then again, I was in a faily light polluted back yard.
With the new house, it's much more convienent to observe. I hope to be getting out under the stars much more often.
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