Observing Log for Mike Durkin 9/16-17/2023 about 11:30PM-1:30AM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 3/5 Temperature: 55-65 degrees Equipment: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC Got a late start, so decided to just do some visual observing Jupiter: At first the view was very turbulent, either because the scope needed to cool down or because the view was looking above a house. Later on in the evening the view seemed to stablize a bit better. Saw 3 moons: Callisto, Io and Ganymede. No Great Red Spot. Two bands, one seemed to have a bit more red than the other. Also the 2 polar caps regions. Saturn: Rings are a bit closed up so the angle must be small, like about 10 degrees. Titan was easily visible and Rhea was sometimes visible, especially with averted vision. I though sometimes I might have picked up some of the other moons with averted vision but I would never replicate consistently to say for sure. Able to see the globe's shadow on the rings and maybe some of the rings casting a shadow onto the globe. Could not say for certin if I could see the Cassini Division. Uranus: No significant detail and the color was muted, no matter which eyepiece I used. But it was clear that this was not a point source. NGC 772: I might have just barely seen this by moving the telescope. If so it seemed slightly elongated. But it could also be my eye playing tricks on me M74: I don't think I picked this up at all. I definitely had it in my field of view, but nothing definite to make out, and even with nudging the telescope back and forth, I don't think I saw it. At the end of the session, I had dew on the corrector plate, so I should have used one of my dew heaters Other Log Entries <-- 2022 Jan  Feb  Mar   Apr   May  Jun   Jul  Aug   Sep   Oct  Nov  Dec  2024 -->