Dave Wallace's Adventures in Astronomy

04/11/2004 0000 UTC

I never saw so many telescopes at the observing field as were there when I set up this evening. But I think I set the record for most computer power per inch of aperture. In addition to the autostar, tonight I have the laptop. I was going to try using the LPI to image Jupiter, but I couldn't find a spot to set up where the glare from the laptop's screen wouldn't bother other observers. So I just took one attempt while the sky was relatively light and then packed the computer and LPI away. Between the wind blowing the scope around and the difficulty getting things to work right in the dark (black keys are NOT easy to type on when it's dark!), I figured I could waste the whole night playing around or I could simply observe.

(The one picture didn't come out all that bad, actually. Unfortunately, the image was only from one frame and it's small. But the Hartmann mask really helped get the focus right. I'm sure if I can get the LPI to stack a bunch of frames and if the scope is stable enough I'll get a pretty good picture. There's no real rush -- Jupiter will be lord of the dark for several months yet.)

Went Messier hunting and bagged M36 and M37. Not very interesting open clusters. Got M3 again (just to prove it wasn't a fluke). And had the usual peek at M42 and M45. Called it a night at about 10:30.