Archive for May, 2010
Viewing Planets in Daytime.
Yesterday evening I went out with my ETX to take a look with the solar filter at the first set of sunspots in weeks.
After spending a bit of time there I thought I’d get a look at Venus as it would be easier to see anything of interest with the daytime sky behind it. I could see it clearly and I got to try some colour filters, and trying all of my eyepieces and barlows to get a view.
Next up was to locate Mars – the Autostar made short work of that, and I could easily see Mars against the daytime sky, with well over an hour to sunset. There was not much to see except hints of markings of course, given the 6.2″ diameter of Mars at the moment and the 2″ rayleigh resolution limit of this little scope, combined with the short 350mm focal length. Still, it was nice to actually see the planet at all.
Feeling confident, I went off and selected Saturn. Lo and behold, there was Saturn, just barely brighter than the background sky, but still visible. I could see the rings almost edge on, and the shadow of the rings on the planet cloudtops. Still impressive I think, and points me to the possibility of observing some items during the day at least
Stolen – Giant Reign
My Giant Reign was stolen from Castletroy on Monday the 17th of May.
It’s a metallic green Giant Reign, with RockShox Recon 335 front forks, and a Specialized V-groove saddle. The bike has sentimental value apart from the actual cost to me to replace it.
If anyone sees this bike either in use or for sale please get in contact with the Gardai in Henry Street, or contact me directly by phone or text on zero eight seven, six four three eight seven two five.
There’s a decent cash reward for information leading to the safe return of this bike.
Binoculars
I got my hands on a battered pair of Teleskop-Service 15×70 binoculars that had been dropped a few times and damaged. The previous owner had tried to fix them but the binoculars just didn’t want to stay aligned. So I had a go at fixing them, and now they stay aligned for the moment and the focuser operates correctly after the addition of a bit of neoprene foam around hte barrels to act as a spring.
First light was Friday night, and it was enlightening to see how easy M101 and M51 were to see, M13 looked like a globular cluster and not just a puffball. M104 was seen as a spindle. It really looked like I was looking through two telescopes and seeing more than I had been seeing in the ETX.