11:30pm

Well, here I am on top of a mountain in Larkspur, like some guru from the far east. Anyone willing to climb up this thing is worthy of advice. And that advice is: go home, it's cold. Lugging this thing up this hill was not easy. I packed the cart the wrong way. But it's worth it. The view is incredible, and the smell intoxicating.

Aligning the scope was no problem for a beginner like me. I'll be the expert soon. It helps to have good equipment to do this right. You gotta be outta your mind, too. It's cold up here.

What's that noise? It's dark, so I use my flash light and see a scene right out of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.

The moon is out. Darn thing is too bright. Gotta milk it like that jumping cow did and try and get some good pictures. Question: why would a dish run away with a spoon? Where's the appeal?

I just finished taking some digital photos with the Nikon. Pictures 1 was taken at f/10 with the 40mm eyepiece. Picture 2 was at f/6.3 with the 40mm eyepiece. Picture 3 was at f/6.3 with the 40mm eyepiece (again) but with the ND filter installed. I'm sucha geek. I know the focus is a little off, but you should have seen the other attempts. They looked focused in the camera monitor, but that's a small LCD screen.

Pic 1: f/10 40mm

Pic 2: f/6.3 40mm

Pic 3: f/6.3 40mm ND Filter

The moon has just set, so I tried to view Mars, but it was too low. The image shimmered way too much. On to bigger targets.

There's the dew monster. Equipment's a little damp, but the scope is doing fine. Time to realign the scope. I'd imagine that a polar alignment would last longer than an Alt/Az.

Meanwhile, back on the Messier farm: Looks like it's globular cluster night. M3 was fairly visible and a bit fuzzy. The electronic focus is slow between big jumps in eyepiece magnification. I've been disconnecting it and re-connecting it to take care of the bulk focusing. It's fast on fast off, but I gotta work out a smooth progression. The focal reducer requires some major focus changes. M13 was WAY cool. The 15mm did the trick. Nice detail. It looks bright enough to try it with the Nikon. I hooked up the digicam on the 15mm with a max 8sec exposure.... No go....all dark. Gotta invest in the real CCD thing. Give me a little credit for trying. M11 was very pretty, very clear and sharp to the edges.

Uh-oh fogs a comin' in. It's 1:12am. I figure I got another hour before I gotta scram. It looks big as it hits the trees. Taking a break now to play with the software.

Well, it happened.... the dew monster struck and struck hard. The collector is dripping. No wonder Andromeda looked like a small smudge.

Packing it in for the night. It's 1:50am.