Critter Visitor, Moon and Venus, Lunar Crater Janssen
Posted: 11 August 2013
Monsoon cloudiness returned on Friday, 9 August 2013. Saturday started out mostly cloudy, but as sunset approached, the cloud cover decreased. The observatory was opened Saturday, 10 August 2013, at 1833 MST, 101°F. First viewed Venus, 83X, at 1843 MST. Then viewed the moon against the still bright sky while waiting for sunset. At 1859 MST, switched to 222X on the moon; crater Janssen looked nice with the current angle of solar illumination on the lunar surface.
Sunset occurred at 1917 MST. Shortly afterwards a visitor began coming towards the observatory:
Here's a short video of the large tarantula taken with an iPhone 4 under poor lighting:
Tarantula 081013 from Mike Weasner on Vimeo.
At 1943 MST, took this photo of the western sky showing the crescent moon and Venus (right of the moon) with the telescope and dome in the photo, f/3.5, 1/15sec, ISO 2500, 18mm:
At 1949 MST, took a short afocal video on Crater Janssen at 222X by handholding the iPhone 4 over the eyepiece. This is a cropped frame from that video:
By 1950 MST, the cloud cover was increasing. At 1952 MST, took a quick look at Saturn, 222X, as clouds were approaching the planet. Seeing was not very good.
At 1955 MST, clouds were now in most of the sky. Began closing the observatory.
The observatory was closed at 2004 MST, 82°F. I checked the sky several times over the next several hours, but it was always cloudy.
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