I had looked up the altitude and azimuth of all the planets and after doing a sunspot count I started working my way east along the ecliptic trying to locate Mercury, Venus, the Moon and Jupiter in that order. I wasn't doing very well until I got to the Moon which was an obvious naked-eye object. From there I backtracked and got Venus and stayed with it until Peter had it in his scope. Then I worked over and found Jupiter. Once Peter switched to Jupiter I went for Mercury and might have dropped the scope right next to it but since it was a flash in the pan that I wasn't able to find again I can't be sure that is what I saw. It might have as easily been sun glinting off a plane or a Mylar balloon. I was looking close enough to the sun that it was hard to get and keep my eye behind the point on the eyepiece where the sky was a light baby blue rather than garish white.
LightTrac graphic
LightTrac graphic
Sky Safari graphic
Seeing wasn't great and there was dome haze that kept dimming Venus below my level of visibility. The weather was very pleasant until the Sun set into the buildings of Central Park South.
We had a lot of the public stop by to ask what we were looking at and look through the telescopes.
As usual out two hour observing session was more like four hours.
Early forecasts had called for it to get up to 20% clouded over after sunset but when I got home this afternoon and checked the forecast they had changed it to clear through until at least curfew. I had said that I might come back out tonight to get the remaining naked-eye planets so sent Peter an email confirming my intention to go out earlier to the 2330 I had initially proposed so that I would be able to observe the Moon again.
I was feeling tired and sore from this afternoon's session but I dragged myself back up to Drip Rock at 2130. The Moon must have been more tired than me because he was a no show. Peter said he had a family gig and needed to get rested up for the coming work week so he didn't come out either.
Without the Moon to keep me busy I needed something to occupy my time until Mars and Saturn rose.
I started out looking at the Pliades, the Cyclopse in the Hyades, both of which crowd the eyepiece at 25x, then moved over to M42. I was having a lot of trouble locating the Sword until it popped out from behind a building.
Continuing to move east I came to Sirius and tried for M41 again. I wasn't having any luck but decided to change the direction I used the triangle to point to and found it without any problems. Last week Peter said the "triangle points right at it" but that is only true if you look where the triangle is pointing the way he does which I assumed I was doing. A triangle points in three different directions and I had just chosen the one of the two plausible directions that didn't point at the star and since my reasoning told me I was looking in the right direction I never questioned it with Peter or looked in the other direction. But I have located the cluster by myself without even referring to a star chart so should be able to do it again. I think that is probably the first faint fuzzy I have located with one of my own scopes.
Sky Safari image annotated in PhotoPad
Finder circles at 1,2 and 6 degrees
Sky Safari graphics
Finder circles at 1, 2 and 3.5 degrees
Around 2230 I was looking low on the horizon for Mars and found something orangish, but then I looked up and saw something big and bright where nothing should be under the haunches of Leo. After a lot of playing with SkySafari I determined that I had been looking at Arcturus. This I confirmed when I remembered that the Big Dipper was hanging from it's bowl with the handle curving towards the eastern horizon. That gave me an idea where I needed to look for Saturn. I poked around in Leo trying to work myself into the neighborhood of M65, M66, and NGC3628, realizing that I was unlikely to see them since I was having trouble locating stars bright enough to accomplish the hop. I was one or two hops away when I saw some new light sources in the trees.
I checked and I wasn't looking at building lights so I figured it was probably Spica and stayed with it waiting for Saturn to rise rather than going back to Leo and starting my star hop over again. About 2245 my point of light came into a gap in the branches and resolved into Saturn. By 2300 it was above the trees. Seeing must have been excellent because Saturn resolved well all the way up to 75x in my zoom eyepiece. Sometimes it looked like the front of the rings were pointed down and when I looked away and looked back again a moment later they would look like they were pointing up. I checked in SkySafari but they don't provide ring inclination data like Planetarium does and when I stepped the time by month into next year the only change I could see was in the angle of the ecliptic and the size of the planet, it looks like they use a static image for Saturn. I was able to see the planet's shadow on the western side of the rings.
