Cloud cover: 10%-20% – Cirrus
Transparency: below avg.
Seeing: avg (3/5)
Darkness: city sky glow, no moon
Limiting Magnitude: 4 (unaided), 8 (bino)
Wind: none
Humidity: 75%-80%
Temperature: mid-70’s
Instrument: Bushnell 12×50
Jupiter: bright disc, no cloud bands. Right bino tube seems to have slight astigmatism; right eye has no astigmatism in left tube.
Ganymede: distinct dot ~2d right of Jupiter’s disc. According to S&T’s online utility for identifying Jupiter’s moons, the dot must be Ganymede.
Antares: yellowish-orange color that sparkles under magnification. Very nice.
M4 not visible, presumably due to sky glow and low-ap binos.
The “Antares pentagon” fills 80%-90% of bino’s FOV.
Vesta: approx. same mag. as nearby HIP80793, distinctly dimmer than phi-chi-psi ophiuchus.
Celestia data for Vesta was incorrect. To display Vesta’s correct position, Celestia’s database must be updated. In the file Celestia/data/asteroids.scc, in the section for Vesta, the orbital parameters should be:
{
Period 3.62885
SemiMajorAxis 2.36145
Eccentricity 0.08902
Inclination 7.133
AscendingNode 103.926
ArgOfPericenter 150.297
MeanAnomaly 205.652
These values were copied from wikipedia’s entry on Vesta. Some values lacked precision of metric values, so where more precision was desired the values were computed by dividing Vesta metric data by Earth metric data.
Used house fan to repel mosquitos. Need two fans as mosquitos bit leeward side (get it?) inside shirt.
