Let's catch up. The Conjunction.

I haven't posted in a while. I think I've said this before, but after a while, the weight of everything that's happened and the fact I could never hope to keep up with it all builds up, I procrastinate more, and well, I never get around to talking about what's happened the past month or so. I must confess, I have been worse about keeping observing log records as well for the past month or so, which has contributed to this problem. And, perhaps this blog doesn't get enough readers for me to bother apologizing, but a blog isn't necessarily only for readers from the present.

The Great Conjunction was over quicker than it began! I observed it the week leading up to the 21st, with both my 6" Dobsonian and the new 10" Dob. It was a thrilling sight to see them come closer and closer, and I measured their approximate separations based upon with which eyepiece they could just barely be seen together in the field of view.

From December 18th. 250P or DT6, I don't remember which.

On the 21st, my cousins came over for observing. Quinn came first, and we exchanged christmas presents. Quinn gave me a green laser pointer, because when we would be out observing I'd be trying to show off things in the sky and Quinn would be unclear of where I was pointing, and just ask, "this?" while pointing off in the distance. "I dunno, probably," I would have to say, and it slows down the observing somewhat. The laser pointer has alleviated some of these problems, and I can now freely point out stars and the locations of deep sky objects to any viewers around without worrying about whether they can follow where I'm pointing. I gave Quinn a telescope. An Orion SkyScanner 100, a telescope I'd greatly enjoyed earlier in the summer when I'd borrowed one from my friend Sky.

Orion SkyScanner 100. Note that the eyepiece is at the top instead of the side. This is a problem.

At sunset, the 6" Dobsonian went out to the far corner of the yard, and I tried for a while to observe Jupiter & Saturn, trying to find them with a planetarium app on my phone with the phone held up to the eyepiece of the straight-thru finderscope. No luck.

My cousin Brynn arrived with her son M, and he had brought his own telescope, a Discover with Dr. Cool! branded toy Lunar Telescope refractor, which came with a tiny piece of a meteorite (I actually have my own piece, a larger chunk, of the same meteorite). Having had experience with a neighbor's kid's Vivitar toy refractor, I didn't have high hopes. But M's toy is actually surprisingly good! It's a real multicoated doublet objective, and although the eyepieces are Huygens, they're in good focal lengths and they're internally blackened. Mount sucks, but the tripod isn't as wobbly as the Vivitar. As a toy? It may be a hidden gem. M was able to see the Great Conjunction, Moon, and even the Pleiades. It's really not bad.

 

Not long after Brynn and M arrived, I finally saw the first hint of Jupiter, and the telescope immediately turned to it. We took turns viewing it at low power, then high power, until the pizza arrived. I managed to find time to scribble a disappointingly simple log entry into my book before I was called inside. I had wanted to really do justice to the event, but to be fair, the seeing conditions were not really good enough, even at the beginning, to get any interesting detail.

Because of how quick it was, the conjunction itself that I had been looking forward to for so long? It seemed like it barely happened. Oh well--there's lots and lots of good photos online to remember the day by, and I do have a sketch of the positions and orientations as I saw them. I had intended to go and make a proper drawing in my log not long after, but I never got around to it. Maybe I will yet.

The rest of the night was spent looking at star clusters, the Moon, and the Great Nebula with the 10" dob with Brynn and M, and then later teaching Quinn how to use the SkyScanner.

We ran into the same problem I had before, which made me really wish I had listened to my doubts. The eyepiece position of the SkyScanner is something I'd complained about before, and the fact was it just completely prevented Quinn from getting comfortable using it. I was going to keep it and drill holes in, doing essentially the same modification done by 10 Minute Astronomy. But I don't trust myself with a drill, so I decided to order some tube rings from Orion instead. They haven't arrived, and unfortunately I don't think Quinn has used the telescope much since Christmas. I hope that with rings and a better eyepiece and finderscope position, it will have more use. And Quinn is inexperienced, so I have some teaching to do anyway.