Equipment: Celestron 9.25” Edge HD
7/1/2020
Bright Moon and nice dry desert weather. Typically, I would bring SV102 ED to split some doubles, but it has been awhile since I caught some asteroids and that activity would benefit from larger
Lyra doubles (all with Edge 9.25”)
STT 352 – 7.9, 9.4, 24.3”, yellow, silver. Wide pair with nice colors. TV Plossl 32mm (73x).
STF 2333 – 7.8, 8.6, 12.9, 13.7, ab6.4”, ac164.4”, ad85.8”. AB – close white pair in TV Plossl 32mm (73x). C- silvery and D – gray dots with averted vision in Pentax XW 10mm (235x).
STT 356 – 7.3, 9.2, 10.9, ab28.6”, ac48.9”, gold, yellow, silver. TV Plossl 32mm (73x).
STF 2351 – 7.6, 7.6, 5.0”, white pair. TV Plossl 32mm (73x).
Double Double (Eps1,2 Lyr) – wanted to test Edge 9.25” on this famous quartet. With TV Plossl 32mm (73x) A and C looked elongated. Two pairs were partially split with Pentax XW 20mm (118x) and cleanly split with XW 10mm (235x). Overall, the look was not as clean as in
STF 2349 – 5.4, 9.4, 12.1, ab6.8”, ac32.9”, cream, light blue, silver. Nice colors and contrast. Pentax XW 20mm (118x).
STF 2362 – 7.5, 8.7, 4.4”, uneven yellow pair. TV Plossl 32mm (73x).
STF 2367 – 7.1, 8.8, 11.0, ac14.3”, ae151.7”, gold, blue, white. Pentax XW 20mm (118x).
STF 2372 – 6.5, 7.7, 11.8, ab25.2”, ac114”, white, silver, gray. TV Plossl 32mm (73x).
Jupiter
Around midnight
Saturn
Saturn was small, fuzzy and disappointing again.
Asteroids
Each month typically bring a new set of asteroids. I usually go from brightest to dimmest until I start having trouble detecting them. I though with 9.25” I should be able to go comfortably down to 13 mag. However, bright Moon and poor seeing have stopped my hunt at about mag 12.5. Here is this evening catch. (453) Tea and (197) Arete are two smallest asteroids I have observed after Eros. Still amazes me how we can see something as small as 21 km from 150,000,000 km away.
7/4/2020
4th of July evening started with some homemade fireworks bangs in the valley below, but they died out quite fast. The rest of the night was quiet and beautiful. I started the session by watching Full Moon rise and continued with Lyra binaries.
Lyra doubles (all with Edge 9.25”)
STF 2380 – 7.3, 8.7, 25.5”, gold, light blue. TV Plossl 32mm (73x).
STTA 172 – 7.9, 8.7, 61.2”, white pair. TV Plossl 32mm (73x).
STf 2390 – 7.4, 8.6, 4.3”, yellow, bluish. Tight split with TV Plossl 32mm (73x).
Beta Lyr – 3.6, 6.7, 13.0, 14.3, 10.1, 10.6, ab4.6”, ac46.4”, ad64.4”, ae67.1”, af85.7”. AB is a beautiful and easy double with rich bright white and blue colors. Dimmer white E and F components are also easy to spot. TV Plossl 32mm (73x). Faint C and D require large
Delta 1,2 Lyr – 5.6, 4.3, 644”. This is a beautiful binocular target: blue and orange star embedded in a glow of unresolved stars of Stephenson 1 open cluster. In Edge 9.25” Delta 1 and 2 were spread far apart. Delta 1 lost its blue hue and became plain white, but Delta 2 was even more beautiful gaining rich copper color. Stephenson 1 was resolved into individual stars in Edge 9.25”. Some of them are considered components of Delta 1 Lyr or Delta 2 Lyr systems. I have identified eight of them ranging from mag 8.7 to 12, all of white color. TV Plossl 32mm (73x).
STT 525 – 6.1, 9.1, 7.6, 11, ab1.8”, ac45.5”, ad215.3”, gold, white, blue, white. AB – partial split with Delite 7mm (336x), TV Plossl 32mm (73x) for C and D.
AG 366 – 8.5, 8.7, 1.4”, pale yellow pair. Figure 8 split with Pentax XW 20mm (118x) and Pentax XW 10mm (168x).
STF 2431 – 6.2, 9.6, 19”, white, blue. TV Plossl 32mm (73x).
Jupiter and Saturn
Views of both planets were poor.
Moon
I have played with EPs and filters to achieve best details contrast for the full Moon. The winning combo for the evening in Edge 9.25” was Pentax XW 20mm and old stock Celestron Dark Green #58.
Hit the slipping bag around midnight, woke up at predawn as I often do while in the desert. The sky was grayish-blue. Bright yellow full Moon was low in the west. Jupiter and Saturn were high in the south with Mars and Venus to the east. What a splendid sight!