Observatory was opened Tuesday, 14 September, at 1808 MST, 101°F.  There were some clouds low along the western horizon, but otherwise the sky was clear.  At 1814 MST, viewed Venus in the 8” at 77X.  Then set up for iPhone afocal imaging.  The above image of Venus was taken at 222X and is an unedited still image (not a video frame).  I then slewed the telescope to the nearly first quarter moon, but before I did any imaging of it, I entered the TLE data for the upcoming International Space Station (ISS) pass into the AutoStar II.  Once that was done, I began imaging the moon with the iPhone.  Here is the moon at 77X:

And here are the craters Aristoteles (left) and Eudoxus (right) taken at 666X:

A little later in the evening, I captured the same craters with the D70 DSLR at prime focus + 2X Barlow Lens + 3X TeleXtender, ISO 800, for comparison to the above iPhone image.  Here’s the D70 image:

At 1915 MST, I began setting up for the ISS pass.  I hoped to image the ISS with iPhone video afocally through a 26mm eyepiece (77X).  I first attached the iPhone afocal adapter to the 8” telescope and using the moon, aligned the camera lens and focused the image.  I locked the focus on the 8”.  Next, selected the ISS on the AutoStar and the telescope went through its satellite pass motion and stopped at where the pass would start.  Unfortunately, during this motion, the iPhone adapter shifted, messing up my optical alignment. (back to the drawing board on my design!)  I aligned the camera as best I could with no available target visible and began waiting for the ISS pass to start.  When the pass started I was very busy trying to get the ISS on the iPhone screen as the telescope slewed rapidly tracking the space station.  I was moderately successful.  A few frames of the video actually showed the space station.  And not only that, the structure of the ISS is visible.  Here are two frames from the video, nearly a minute apart, showing the changing orientation of the space station as it passed overhead.

Amazing for a cell phone!  I hope to capture better images of the ISS in the future.  But I need to improve my homemade iPhone afocal adapter first.

At 1955 MST, I set up for the D70 DSLR lunar imaging I mentioned earlier.  Following the imaging, I did some lunar terminator observing with the Meade Series 5000 5.5mm eyepiece (364X).  The views were awesome.  At 2018 MST, I took this photograph of the nearly First Quarter moon with the D70 DSLR and a VR zoom lens set to 300mm, 1/200sec, ISO 800:

As the next day was going to be a long day of activities, and hopefully a long night in the observatory, I decided to close up.  Closed the observatory at 2030 MST, 79°F.