Not a bad night for observing, although the dewfall was relentless. My scope is bare-bones - a simple dobsonian-mounted newtonian reflector without any fancy gadgets or electronics. I do think that I might have to get a power inverter and one of those tiny blowdryers, though. Early in the evening the coyotes were restless - a lot of coyotes from the sound of it - and a couple of dogs were answering out of either annoyance or some instinctive longing.

The first thing to appear in the sky, around 8:00 PM, was Jupiter and it looked wonderful despite being low in the SouthWest and up before even good dark. The bands were very clear with the 15mm eyepiece. I could see 3 moons to one side. Using the 20mm eyepiece I caught another moon pretty far away on the other side. Venus appeared next, but looked pretty much like a really bright star in my scope. Vega was the first star visible, as usual, and I spent some time looking over the charts I'd printed out. I won't have an opportunity to finish up the Messier catalog until late Spring next year, so I've started on the Herschel catalog - and there are so many things to be seen in the Winter skies. It's been a while since I've hunted new objects and my skills are a bit rusty. The humidity fogging up my finder was a hindrance. I may consider, as an auxiliary, building a primitive finder site that has no lens to fog up.

I located M30, a small globular cluster, fairly easily. The other Messier object up this night, M74, eluded me. For Herschel objects, I concentrated on those near Cassiopeia, successfully observing NGC 7789, 7790, 129, 136, 225, 381, 436, 559, 637, 654, and 659 over around two hours time. I made unsuccessful attempts to track down NGC 185, 287 and 40 but by this time my mirrors were also fogging up a bit. Andromeda was striking visible to the naked eye, and looked excellent in the scope along with the companion galaxy. I was winding down around 11:30 PM. Orion was just striding up on the Eastern Horizon, showing a shoulder, a foot and his belt of 3 stars. I casually gazed at the Pleiades with the 25mm eyepiece for some minutes and then began packing my sodden gear. I knew that on arriving home, I'd have to unpack it all and set it up in the garage to dry out.

A few images of the observing site and some of my fellow observers is on flickr.

Wanting a way to use my red LED flashlight both at the lens and on the worktable, I cast about the shop for some scrap materials that might work as a simple stand. A Tazo tea canister, scrap of aluminum bar, a bit of self-adhesive velcro (fuzzy half), a couple of machine screws and a handful of pea gravel (for ballast in the canister) and viola! I used the canister as a form to hand bend the aluminum bar into an S shape. The velcro provides some thickness for the flashlight's clip to grab onto and protects the light from scratches. Full size image is here.