19:30-20:53 CST
I got home from work, ate supper, and came outside with my AT80ED (80 mm,
I found the Moon with my Stellarvue 15 mm (37.3x) 82 degrees eyepiece and quickly noticed that I had perfect timing to witness a near dead center, double star occultation! The dark limb of the Moon was very close to the double star 77 Piscium. The main star was slightly brighter and closer the Moon. I put in my new Stellarvue 4 mm (140x) 82 degree eyepiece to enjoy the show. The main star blinked out first at 01:36:00
Before enjoying the sites on the Moon, I turned to Jupiter before it went behind my trees. I still had the new 4 mm eyepiece in. The four Galilean moons were all on my east side of Jupiter. The two main belts were visible in addition to some northern cloud bands. I could faintly see some festoons on the belts. Seeing was about 3/5. It may have been better, but my telescope was still cooling off and my neighbors had their fireplace going (smelled like old boots burning). I experimented with various eyepieces to compare views. I tried my tiny 6 mm (93.3x) Plössl, then added the 2X Barlow (187x) , my 5 mm (112x), and then my 12 mm with the 3x Barlow (140x). The clarity of Jupiter was similar across the eyepieces, though the more glass in the optical path, the slightly fainter Jupiter was, as expected. The field of view was obviously different between designs and with the new high power 4 mm eyepiece, the Jovian system stayed in view a long time, even though my mount has no tracking.
I’m went back to the Moon to check out the details with my new eyepiece. Though relatively high power (140x), I could move my eye all around and see all of the Moon. The image seemed to move very slowly through my wide field view using my alt/az mount. I also notice that details remained sharp across the entire 82 degree field of view all the way to the edge. The details along the terminator were fantastic. Some of the cool views were the craters Posidonius, Theophilus, and the mountains at the edge of the Sea of Serenity. The weird shaped crater Torricelli really stood out too.
I continued observing the Moon with my Astro-Tech Paradigm 12 mm (46.7x) eyepiece, hoping to catch the 77 Piscium pair come back out from behind the Moon. I watched the main star come out about 02:47:00
I decided to go inside for the evening after watching the complete occultation phase of the 77 Piscium pair.