Monday, January 31, 2005

7-Jan-99 to 8-Jan-99, 22:45 - 23:00, 23:55 - 0:10

Yesterday night, I tried to look out from another window of my apartment and I found a bright yellowish-orange star outside the window, I then decided the observation tonight. Again, since the window view is kind of small, probably 9 degree by 9 degree, I could not identify anything. Since it's heavily light polluted here, I guess it's the planet Saturn.

The window is inside my kitchen, and after setting up everything, I placed a wooden board on the floor to place my eyepieces and barlows. At the first observation, I could see only one barely visible star with my naked eyes. Pointing the Ranger there reveal a pink sky, with a lot of stars, filling the whole field of view of the 32mm. Excellent view! I was attracted, and by scanning around, there were quite a large number of stars available. Turning to the 20mm makes the view of the stars even better for the sky become darker.

In the second observation time, the Saturn suspect appears but after pointing the Ranger there at 15x, I could make a conclusion that I've made it wrong, it's not the Saturn. Instead, I guess it could be the Betelgeuse. Okay, I switched my goal to test my Ranger again. I first pushed it to 381x with the 6.3mm plus the Powermate, the diffraction pattern is not bad, I further push it to 762x, the image is so similar as the 381x, except the star moves so quickly that I could hardly keep it in the field. By placing the 2x barlow before the Powermate, I guess the power is even higher, and yes, the image tends to break down. Anyway, I was pretty disappointed, since I want the Saturn.

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