Had a great pre-dawn session with my son this morning. This was my first time bringing out both the XT6 and the AD10, which I think made it more fun for my son since he could look through the XT6 while I found targets in the AD10 and vice-versa. The crescent moon was partway up when we went out—and we were in the front yard with lots of house and street lights blazing, so we stuck to pretty bright targets.
Jupiter: Seeing conditions were a little disappointing this morning. I seemed to have a hard time getting a clear focus on it, but you could still make out the bands and moons and it would pop into a clear view every now and then.
M42, Orion Nebula: This was really why we were out this morning. Andrew had been really excited to see it and I’d been trying to wait for a moonless morning, but I wanted to take advantage of our long string of clear nights. First I found it with the XT6 and a 32mm plossl and got a “oh, cool” reaction. Then I moved over to the AD10 with a 15mm Luminos and got an “Oh wow!” As it was my first time viewing M42 with both the scope and the
Mars: I only spent a minute or two on Mars since Andrew wasn’t all that thrilled by it, but I could make out some darker patches on the surface pretty easily, so I was happy with that especially considering Jupiter wasn’t super sharp.
M45, Pleiades: The one thing Andrew was disappointed with in the Orion Nebula was the lack of color in comparison to pictures he’d seen. Since he’d commented on the Pleiades a few times when we’d been out I thought that would at least give him some color to enjoy. I think that was technically his first open cluster too. The moonlight had washed out some of the nebulosity, but I could still detect a hint of hazy among all the blue stars.
Moon: I don’t think Andrew had seen a partial moon through the telescope before this morning, and it was a hit. I had let him practice aiming the XT6 at it while I fiddled with some camera stuff, but once we got it lined up he was like “Whoa! You can see mountains and craters!” We tried out a few different EPS and eventually barlowed the 9mm so he could “fly” over the moon some.
He went in shortly after that and I fiddled around with trying to do some afocal photography with my iPhone. I didn’t really have much success getting a good focus using an adapter, but I got some decent free hand images to play with. I also got a t-ring for my
This was probably my last chance to get out for about the next week, so I’m glad I got us up and out this morning. Andrew is dead-set on seeing the
