Mike took some beautiful pictures I hope to post here when I get a chance.  I don’t think his Jupiter pictures turned out, but he got some really good star field and nebulae pictures.  One of the other attendees had a tracking drive for his camera and they experimented with it most of the night.

Let me take a step back for a moment; every year on the first weekend of May,me, my father, my brother and about 30 other guys go on what’s called the Indian Valley Reservoir Fishing Trip. Very little fishing goes on during the trip, but a lot of other things happen, primarily drinking. We all go to the same camp site fifteen or more miles from the nearest town and more than ten miles from the nearest paved road. There’s a lot of local light pollution as the bonfire’s built up and from lights in people’s camps, but a little judicious spacing and a tent between me and the light source takes care of a lot of the problem.

I took my Meade on the trip with great expectations, but I was sorely disappointed. The first night, a lot of the problem wasn’t the telescope, it was a light cloud cover that mostly disappeared at sunset, but not completely. The Milky Way was visible and I could see a lot more than I can at home, but it still wasn’t the stunning visual I’d hoped for. Saturday night was a bit better, but still disappointing. I wish there’d been a better sky, but there’s nothing I could have done about that.

The frustrating part was scanning the skies with my binoculars, finding the stars I wanted to look at, then not being able to find them with the telescope. I would mark stars in my mind, point the telescope in the right direction, then not be able to see the stars I had marked as my guides. At first I thought my sighting scope was out of alignment, until I realized that the real problem was the stars weren’t bright enough for me to see with the telescope. My binoculars have a better aperture than my telescope and stars that were a cinch to see in the binoculars weren’t even bright enough to see at all in the telescope!

Part of the problem might have been solved if I’d brought the 25mm eyepiece, but I didn’t. The real solution will be to wait a little while until I can afford a better telescope and pay attention to what’s really important in a telescope, the aperture. It’s great to be able to magnify an object 100x, but if it’s too faint to see, you’ll walk away frustrated.

The good news is, I got to show about half a dozen rednecks Saturn. Of all the objects in the sky, that’s the one that was easiest to show them that they could recognize easily. Of course, rednecks, beer and telescopes don’t always mix, but we managed to get away without any injuries this time.

I’m an early riser, especially on days like today when I forgot to turn off the alarm. And when I say early, I mean before 5:00 am almost every day. Most days I’m too sleepy to really think about looking at stars, but every once in a while I wander outside before the sun rises, like today. So of course most of the times I manage to grab my cup of coffee and toddle out the fog and clouds anticipate me. Clouds and the flood lights from the condos behind my house do not make a good combination, no matter how light the clouds. There was a very pretty shot of the moon in the clouds that I tried to get in the camera, but it became very obvious that I wouldn’t be able to get much without a tripod and a long exposure. It’s too early in the morning to even try.

Eventually I’ll move someplace with less light pollution and a good view of the sky. Or maybe not, since a high speed internet connection and a host of other things are higher on the list than the star view. But at least that’s on the list. I just don’t think my wife will take “too much light pollution” as a reason to not buy a house if it’s got the things she wants. And it’s not like I’m going anywhere with the current housing market.