Yet another week of clouds and rain.
As I usually do each morning, I checked the astronomy forecast at Astropheric. It has been pretty tough to find a clear night with steady seeing that lines up my schedule, but I'm always hopeful.
Yesterday, Astropheric presented me with this forecast:
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| A Window of Above Average Seeing! |
It didn't look like much, but Astopheric was forecasting a brief amount of time when the sky would be clear and the seeing above average.
I went outside at 2030 (EST) and took a look at the sky. Humidity was really high, but the sky looked promising. I brought out the CAT, leveled it, and attached the imager and waited.
The humidity was high, equipment was wet, and fog was threatening.
I'm glad I persevered.
This is the Mars image for the night.
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| Hello Mars! |
Fog started to roll in shortly afterwards and everything was drenched... Except for the corrector plate on the CAT. The dew strip and shield did their job. This session was a really good test.
Bonus Image
While waiting for Mars to rise high enough to get out of turbulence of the lower sky, I played with the imager while focused on Jupiter.
Ganymede was nearby, so it was captured, as well.
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| Hello Jupiter and Ganymede! |
It was a fairly success astronomy session, even though the viewing window was so narrow!
