H:- I went out on 8th Nov for mercury transit and of course, I failed, since it should be on 9th Nov instead. Anyway, it was quite nice since I could explore a better nearby place for the observation.
Finally on 9th of Nov, I managed to wake up at 07:50!!! Luckily, I could rush out to a nearby place to observe fairly quickly. I only got a very bad baader film (very old one) for my 12x DC, I didn't bring any telescope. Later I found that piece of baader film has light leakage, quite serious indeed and it actually hurt the performance, in particular the contrast a lot.
Anyway, I was blessed to be able to get a few shots with a tiny mercury dot.
(Later I believe it's not mercury but a large sunspot near the solar disc edge)
X:- We booked a car at 30RMB to go for a nearby "big grass field", it was very very dark except the headlight from the nearby highway, but it was enjoyable enough. I didn't regret that I finally pulled out all the mounts, telescopes out from our suitcase since it was so cold there, one couldn't stay there long enough for photography, also the battery which I planned to bring will not live long under this kind of adverse condition, it was well below -10 degree celcius.
My green laser pointer was unable to stand the cool and the battery drained so much that it didn't give a strong enough beam after a few minutes.
The 10x50 was very great. We didn't looked for a lot of targets except those obvious ones like double cluster, andromeda galaxy, pleaides, and those open clusters like M35/36/37/38. Scanning around the winter milkyway was a superb experience... it gave enough impression more than photography, more persistence I mean.
Our local friend failed to stay as long as we did, since she didn't wear enough apparently and she headed back for the car soon. We stayed there for less than an hour, lying on the withered grass land, watching meterior (more than 1 per minute), scanning around.
Totally amazed.
M31 was the most spectacular sight I ever saw about it, it extends all the way to fill up the field of view! That's the first time which I realized that it could be that huge...
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