Observing Report -- March 25, 2016

OMG, at last a clear night! It has been a ridiculously long time since I went out with the scope -- October 3, in fact, when I went to Seymour Mountain. I've set up on the front porch a few times, but it was really, really nice to be able to go out. Even if it's just to the local park, it's an enormous difference from the house, and wonderful because of that.

So yeah, out to the park with the wheels for the first time. They worked wonderfully, and I was able to zip around with very little difficulty. It would have been nice to have some kind of clip for the dust cover, and handles on the side of the scope would also be good -- but other than that, everything is very, very nice.

So how was the observing? In one sense, something of a failure; I came up with a big list of targets and barely hit any of them. But for having fun, it was great.

• Jupiter and its moons were wonderful to see. Even when clouds well, high haze rolled in, it was still worth looking because of hte steadiness of the view. This is the first time I've ever seen the moons as disks, not points -- and I swear, at times Callisto looked grey and mottled. Wonderful.

• 200X was not out of line when it was still; neither was 400X. But the 6mm I've got one of the Owl line is definitely on its way out; too much CA. Even if it's got a narrower FOV, a 6mm Plossl is in my future.

• Dialed in M51, but between a suburban location and haze all I saw were two disconnected, extremely faint points of light.

• M81 and M82, though, were great. Faint but obvious, and I was able to see them both in one FOV with the 18mm eyepiece. I might have seen a dust lane in M82 before the clouds rolled in?

All in all, a great time.