Observing Log for Mike Durkin 10/15/22 about 10:00PM-11:30PM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 9/10, Seeing 4/5 Temperature: 55-65 degrees Equipment: Stellarvue 70mm refractor Visually measured variable stars SS Aqr, SW Peg, S Per and Y Per. I started with Jupiter for the evening since the Great Red Spot was supposed to be transiting at the time. I was able to use the 6.7mm eyepiece and a 3x Barlow lens to get a magnification of 188x. The GRS was not obvious although I could see a gap or some feature in one of the equitorial bands that was the GRS. I was pleasantly surprised on the image quality with such magnification, although the color was definitely muted. Also saw 3 of the Galielean moons. M15 - Very obvious to see. I think it was just the core however since it did not appear as large as I was expecting. Unable to resolve individual stars. Double Cluster in Perseus. 10/14-15/22 about 10:30PM-1:00AM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 9/10, Seeing 3/5 Temperature: 40-50 degrees Equipment: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC and Hutech modified Canon T3i I wanted to test out using the ASIAir again and see how polar alignment would work. I forgot how to connect with my iPhone and had to look it up. I had to disable Cellular Data in Settings. I started by focusing on Jupiter in my camera. While using Live Preview and at 10x magnification, I'd say that Jupiter looked pretty good in the display, although I could not save the image. I also started to see the Great Red Spot start to come into view. I also was able to see some of the Galilean moons. After that I decided to see if I could find some sort of galaxy. After flailing around for a while, I settled on M33. I also actually think for maybe the first time I was able to detect M33 in my finderscope as a barely brighter patch. After that I looked at Mars in the camera's Live Preview. It had a gibbous shape and I think I could detect a bit of a polar cap. I also think I saw some dark patches, although the seeing made it hard to determine the exact location on the disk. Then I took a couple of pictures of the waning gibbous Moon. 10/9/22 about 9:00PM-10:00PM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 9/10, Seeing ??/5 Temperature: 45-55 degrees Equipment: Hutech modified Canon T3i DSLR photometry of R Lyr and P Cyg. It has been a while since I've done R Lyr. I also did both stars as ISO 800, which isn't usual for my routine. Other Log Entries <-- 2021  Jan   Feb  Mar  Apr   May  Jun  Jul  Aug   Sep  Oct   Nov   Dec  2023 -->