Summer is on its way. Today I started up the swamp cooler on the house, I usually hold off as long as I can but it was getting a bit too warm for comfort.
I had a good session out in the dome tonight. It was about 73F when I began, around 8:15 local time. By midnight it had dropped to 59F. That's actually not so bad, there are often days where the temperature inside the dome varies by as much as 40 degrees between the high and low for the day. So far my equipment has survived but the daily temperature change obviously must take its toll on stuff out there.
Here's what I observed, it was a relatively slow observing night:
-Sirius (to re-align);
-Saturn, and moons Tethys, Dione, Rhea, and Titan. Enceladus was hiding near the glare of the planet when I looked. I was able to pump up the power to 293x because the seeing was fairly good tonight.
-Pollux;
-Castor A & B - I also sketched the field of view in my AL Double Star award log. The split was easy but it did not seem like a full magnitude difference between them to me.
-Wasat (Delta Geminorum), a nice double with a bright primary and faint secondary. I also sketched this one. I'd like to get a little more serious about taking double star measurements at some point. I also tried to image Castor and Wasat but they were both too bright for my CCD; maybe I will try again sometime with a less sensitive camera.
-M3 Globular Cluster, NGC5272. This is what is in the picture above. The color is all wrong but it makes an interesting comparison to the M3 image I posted last week, which was taken with a different camera. Of course this picture was also taken with an 82+% moon nearby.
-Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachman. I observed one of the break-up components, I think it was C but maybe B, both visually and in the camera. Took a few pics but I was having trouble with the tracking system so many of them came out badly. It will take a while for me to go through them all to determine whether I can squeeze a semi-decent image out.
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