It was
relatively cloudy until about midnight, but then all the clouds cleared, and
the moon didn’t rise until 1 AM, so we had pretty good darkness. We went hunting for some deep-sky objects,
but could only see dim smudges. We
looked at Bode’s Nebula (well, it's actually a galaxy), the Whirlpool Galaxy, globular cluster M3, and the Andromeda Galaxy. We looked at the Whirlpool
Galaxy and Andromeda with binoculars as well.
We also looked at Neptune, which did have a bluish color to it, but
couldn’t quite find Pluto. We forgot to
put the dew shield on, so that ended our night early, plus I really need to
clean the corrector plate, both from drying dew spots and my attempt at an isopropyl
alcohol solution that I made my own distilled water for that I suspect wasn’t
distilled enough. [For all of you who just cringed at the thought of me using semi-distilled water with isopropyl alcohol to clean a multi-coated optic, do not fret - the corrector plate suffered no permanent damage!]
Next week is the
Perseids meteor shower!! And it will be
a moonless night, so I’m going to set up the camera to try and take some
long-exposure pictures of some deep-sky objects. I’m going to order a remote shutter button
for my camera when I order the cleaning fluid so I can take more than 30-second
exposures on Bulb mode.
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