Observing Log for Mike Durkin 12/30/2004 about 9:00 PM Fresh Meadows and Forest Hills, NY, about 40 degrees Transparency: 8/10, seeing: ?/10 10x50 binoculars While helping a friend move, I took out the binoculars to look at Comet Machholz. It has moved further north and it was almost at the zenith while I was looking at it. It seemed fainter that when I saw it last in Oyster bay, but that could have been due to the higher light pollution of Queens as compared to Nassau county, or because the sky wasn't quite as transparent. Later on I went out to Oyster Bay hoping to take some wide angle shots of the comet, but some clouds moved in and the transparency turned very poor. By the end of the night I could only just make out the brightest stars in Orion. 12/25/2004 8:00-10:00PM Oyster Bay, NY, about 30 degrees Transparency: 9/10, seeing: ?/10 10x50 binoculars Spent Christmas out in Oyster Bay. The evening was pretty clear so I decided to try to find Comet Machholz. I used a map from Sky and Telescope magazine and star hopped to the region. It took a few minutes to find, but I was able to easily make out the comet. It seemed about a half a degree in size, and I though I might have been able to make out a tail, but when I examine the comet closer, it appeared there was a second object right next to the comet. Either there was something odd with the comet, or there was a faint star right next to it. When I got home and looked at a star atlas on my Zaurus, there was a star close to the position of the comet. I also looked for a couple minutes at Saturn and M42. 12/5/2004 about 10:00-12:00 AM Oyster Bay, NY, about 35-45 degrees Transparency: 8/10, seeing: 6/10 Celestron Ultima C8 PEC The night was looking clear, so I went out to Oyster Bay to try out the webcam I bought a few months ago. Saturn was pretty low in the sky and over a neighbor's house, but I wanted to see if the webcam would work with my iBook laptop. Well I was able to get some video images of Saturn, however I noticed a couple of things. Even with the 2x barlow lens, the disk of Saturn didn't seem to cover enough pixels. I may need to get a more powerful barlow lens for better picures. I also noticed that when I used the higher resolution settings on the webcam, I couldn't bring the shutter speed down to 1/60th of a second. I also had the gain set around 60%, the lowest setting where I could still see Saturn in the display. Here is the result from one of the movies I took. Other Log Entries <-- 2003  Jan   Feb  Mar  Apr  May  Jun  Jul  Aug   Sep  Oct  Nov  Dec   2005 -->