It's been a LONG time since my last post here.

Life was crazy, but it appears to be slowing down, and I can get back to the things I enjoy.

So, I'm thinking I need a truss-tube telescope to take on my bicycle.  Something with an aperture of around 150. Fairly portable, fairly lightweight.

Has anyone heard of such a thing?  Let me know.

(Maybe I should just build my own.  Would probably make for a great learning experience.)

I need to find a way to take a telescope on a bicycle.

Anyone have any ideas on how to pack a 4.5 inch Newtonian on a bicycle?

We went outside on the morning of Aug 22 and saw what we believed to be Neptune.
We also saw Jupiter (again), Mars and what we think was the Orion Nebula.

We need to get some filters to make viewing better.

Jupiter and moons.

Just a quick snap of Jupiter and a few moons.

Taken 21 July 2011.

Early Morning Pics of Jupiter!

Hey guys!

Well, I walked out this morning a little after 6am and looked into the sky to see Jupiter looking back at me!

So, what do you do when you see the largest planet in the solar system staring down at you? Get your telescope! What else?

After a few minutes of setup, and a few minutes longer trying to line up the iPhone in the viewfinder, and this is what I saw...



and here's the same pic with a filter...


Now, if you look closely to the lower left of Jupiter you can see the four Galilean moons. Starting from the outside and working your way back to the planet you can definitely see Callisto, Europa and Ganymede. If you squint just a little you can see the closest moon to Jupiter, Io.

What the pic doesn't show at all is that I was actually able to see two colored bands crossing the planet. That's right! I actually saw two of the bands (the colored stripes of the planets atmosphere) of Jupiter!

All in all, a very good morning and I just had to share. :)

Not a lot of viewing tonight.

We had thunderstorms early on tonight, but the northern sky cleared up rather well, so I popped outside to see what there was to see.

I started off locating Benetnash (in Ursa Major), then went on to HR 5126 and HR 5112.  Following a line down and to the right from those two, I believe that I saw M51.

I'll need to have another view of it from a darker location to be sure.

I found M2!

This morning, I looked at the sky from a remote location.  Definitely less light pollution there.

Saw M2 tonight, which would be a personal first.  I have never before seen a globular cluster, so I was a bit unprepared for what I saw.  It was like a star that I couldn't bring into focus, even tho the other stars were all sharp.

Absolutely beautiful!

Since this location has a better vantage of the easter sky, I also took a look at Jupiter, just as it was a few degrees above the horizon.  I was able to discern Jupiter and 4 moons.  It appeared that one was just completing it's transit, because at first there were 3 moons, then the 4th looked like it popped out of the side of the planet.

What a stunning morning.