Location: Tomball, TX
Cloud cover: none
Transparency: clear
Seeing: poor (2/5)
Darkness: city sky glow, no moon
Limiting Magnitude: n/a
Wind: mild/none
Humidity: 55% early up to 75% later
Temperature: upper-40’s
Start Time: 7:30 pm CST
End Time: 10:30 pm CST
OTA: 8″ SC

Didn’t learn star names in Cassiopeia, but looked them up on the laptop. Found a site that called Alpha Cas by the name Shedir, but NexStar didn’t list that name. Delta Cas was listed as Ruchbah, which was easily found. I aligned with Ruchbah, Sirius, and Capella, and the goto performed quite well all night.

Took significantly longer to find Ceres tonight than last night, even though tonight I had the laptop with SNP. There were several relatively bright stars nearby, widely dispersed with no obvious pattern. Another problem is conflicting orbital data; one set matched last night’s observations, while the other set matched tonight’s. Ugh. Anyway, Ceres sat at the 90 angle of a bright triangle. Also tried finding last night’s location, but some of the faint stars in that pattern were not visible.

Eunomia didn’t take too long to find. It sat between a boat-like squashed trapezoid of four stars and a narrow wedge of five dimmer stars.

Used NexStar’s tour function; it suggested Eta Cassiopeia and M103. The double star Eta Cas was very nice; the primary seemed white while red companion showed better color in the 25mm ep than the 10mm.

The open cluster M103 was not as bright as I expected. The narrow field easily fit in the 25mm view.

The field of view estimates in SNP seem a bit wide. The 32mm’s actual field was about the same size as SNP’s estimate of the 25mm field. Need to revisit that some time.

Location: Tomball, TX
Cloud cover: none
Transparency: clear
Seeing: moderate (3/5) or maybe poor (2/5)
Darkness: city sky glow, no moon
Limiting Magnitude: n/a
Wind: mild/none
Humidity: 65%-75%
Temperature: mid-40’s
Start Time: 8:00 pm CST
End Time: 10:00 pm CST
OTA: 8″ SC
EP: 25mm mostly, also 32mm for M44 and 10mm for Saturn

Need to learn names of stars in Cassiopeia if for no other reason than for picking alignment stars.

Mars – observed briefly, noticed that disc is no longer completely circular. Other details lost in atmospheric turbulence.

Ceres – used SNP to get visual geometry and RA/Dec. Asteroid visible at the intersection of two lines of stars slightly wider than a right angle. Did not realize until looking in SNP later that Ceres would move so “far” within just an hour. Might observe twice tomorrow night an hour or more apart. SNP reference shows that observation time must have been about 8:20 or 8:30 pm, but actual time was 9pm and later. SNP location was Houston instead of Tomball — could that make such a big difference?

M42 – Trapezium clear, nebula surrounding like wings of a heraldic eagle

M44 Beehive – small almost equilateral triangle near center with dim star on one edge

Saturn – rings distinct though nearly edge-on. Visible moons: Tethys, Titan, Dione, and Iapetus, plus three stars in the field of view. Dione and Tethys uncertain at first, stronger with continued observation. Did not see Enceladus (too dim or bad seeing?) or Rhea (maybe lost in Saturn’s glare?), both of which SNP shows very close to Saturn.