Took the new telescope out tonight for
a long night of cold viewing. Spent some time looking at Jupiter
which I still can't manage to get a good picture of. I'm not going to
give up! Tonight was mostly a planet and moon viewing night.
Also spent quite a bit of time viewing
the moon. It was quite bright, but the clarity of it was just
amazing. I even got up to a magnification of 120x, and got a few
pictures of a set of craters along the terminator. I'm amazed with
the quality of the moon with that much magnification. The 114eq
couldn't deliver the moon at that quality with that much
magnification, what a difference the optics in the Omni XLT 150 make.
94% Waxing Gibbous Moon. Click to enlarge.
The craters at the top of the picture above. Names in order from left to right; Phocylides, Schickard, Lehmann,
Lacroix, Vieta, and Cavendish. Click to enlarge.
Not only did I view the moon, but I
also viewed 3 different planets throughout the night. Jupiter was the
very first, but I was again unsuccessful in capturing video of it.
Then I aimed at tiny little Mars later on in the night. Very hard to
get a useful video of it as I had the same problem of overexposure as
I do with Jupiter. While viewing it though I could make out a polar
ice cap and a slight darkening of some of the surface area.
Then I was on to Saturn. I was able to
get a video of it and stack the frames of the video, but I was not
able to capture any detail in the video. Although the eyepiece was in
focus for my eyes I don't think the focus translated very well to my
point and shoot camera. I got what I could. I will be attempting all
3 planets again, and hopefully I will be successful in getting
something good, clear, and useful.
I was in and out of the house quite a bit during the night to warm up as it was quite cold outside. After bringing in the telescope I took a few pictures of all the frost built up on it. This wasn't my coldest session out with a telescope, but it was definitely quite cold.
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