Observing Log for Mike Durkin 5/10/2025 about 9:00PM-11:00PM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 6-9/10, Seeing 3/5 Temperature: 55-65 degrees Equipment: Stellarvue 70mm refractor Mainly testing the new ZWO AM5 mount, which is probably a good idea since the moon was nearly full. So rather than doing a true polar align, I left the mount and telescope in the home position, which should be pointing at the celestial north pole. So I lined up Polaris in the 30mm eyepiece according to my polar alignment app on my iPhone. I used the SkyAtlas app to goto Mars, and it was almost right in the middle of the field of view in the 30mm eyepiece. Then I tried a couple of named stars. The mount did get pretty close to the stars, although I noticed that the SkyAtlas app was not easy to goto some of the more minor objects because the app didn't let me click on them. After that I tried a couple of galaxies, like Markarian's chain and M51, but I could not make out the galaxies at all. I also tried using goto for M13 and M92, the globular clusters in Hercules. Those were visible, but were drowned out quite a bit due to the moon. At this point also the goto was not placing the objects in the middle of the field of view. And finally before I wrapped up I tried looking at the moon. In this case the goto was also off by a little bit, I'd estimate mabe by about 1-2 degrees. One thing I also tried, was at some point I wanted to see if I could use SkySafari to goto. I found a web page that described how to do it by connecting to the WiFi network of the mount and it did seem to work pretty well, although it was off for the moon a little bit as I mentioned above. And by the end, thin clouds were moving in, so it was a good time to wrap up. Other Log Entries <-- 2024 Jan  Feb  Mar  Apr  May   Jun   Jul   Aug   Sep   Oct   Nov   Dec