18 August 2010, the First Anniversary of “First Light” at Cassiopeia Observatory.  I decided to use that as an appropriate time to clean the observatory.  I opened the observatory at 1343 MST, temp=109°F.  I first vacuumed the carpet outside the POD.  I then removed all the items (except the telescope) from inside the observatory:

Wow, did all that come out of the POD?  With the exception of the upright vacuum cleaner in the background at the right, yes it did.  I then vacuumed the interior of the observatory:

I also cleaned the telescope mount.  Then everything was moved back inside.  Whew, that was a lot of work, especially with the temperature hovering around 100°F.  I closed the observatory at 1606 MST, 98°F.

In the evening, there were clouds around but I still wanted to celebrate the First Light anniversary by doing some observing.  I opened the observatory at 1853 MST, 100°F.  A year ago, I photographed some monsoon clouds to the southwest at sunset.  On the 1st Anniversary, I photographed some monsoon clouds to the southeast at sunset:

While doing some observing I had “The Planets” by Holst playing on my iPod in the POD.  That seemed like the right music for the celebration.  At 1903 MST, viewed Mercury in 26mm and 9.7mm eyepieces.  It was very low in the western sky and there were some thin clouds hampering the view, so the view was not very good.  I could, at times, just barely see the crescent shaped phase of the planet.  I then viewed Venus in the 26mm and 9.7mm eyepieces.  Its view was much nicer, being higher in the sky and away from the clouds.  The half-moon phase was easily seen.  Then it was Mars in the 26mm, 9.7mm, and 5.5mm eyepieces.  Surprisingly, during times of good seeing, I could see the North Polar Ice Cap, even though the planet’s disk was very small.  The last planet viewed was Saturn at 1910 MST. I used the 26mm and 9.7mm eyepieces.  The rings were just visible.

When I finished viewing the planets, the moon was behind some thin clouds.  However, at 1925 MST, the clouds had moved eastward and I could view the moon.  With the 26mm eyepiece it was obvious that seeing was not going to be good enough for high magnification lunar photography.  But I did take the photograph of the moon at the top of this page at prime focus + focal reducer, 1/250sec, ISO 500 (cropped slightly from the full-frame version).

I then decided there was too much cloud cover and so closed the observatory at 1945 MST, 85°F.  But it was still an enjoyable First Light 1st Anniversary celebration.

Now for some other items.

On my 13 August report, I mentioned that the light shield to the west had been damaged from some winds.  On 16 August, I noticed that there was even more damage:

The rope supporting the tarps had broken in some strong winds from a monsoon thunderstorm.  I removed the now non-functional light shield on 17 August.  That took about 90 minutes.  I had installed the light shield on 4 December 2009, and it had served well during the time it was up.  With the current foliage, a “light shield” is not really needed to block some lights from the west.  However, sometime this fall or winter, it will need to be replaced.