Open: Wednesday, 25 March 2015, 1811 MST Temperature: 84°F

Session: 798 Conditions: Clear

1818 MST: viewed Venus, 83X. Nice gibbous phase visible. Then slewed to the Moon for a quick look, 83X.

1823 MST: viewed Jupiter, 83X. Equatorial Belts were visible 18 minutes before sunset. 1826 MST: Ganymede and Io became faintly visible. Seeing was not good due to daytime atmospheric heating. 1828 MST: Europa became visible. 1830 MST: Callisto became faintly visible. 1833 MST: all four Galilean Moons were now easily visible, 8 minutes before sunset. 1841 MST: sunset.

1844 MST: back to the Moon. Switched to the William Optics Binoviewers. Seeing was really lousy at 100X but the view of the Moon using both eyes was still pleasing.

Mounted the iPhone 5s on the 8" LX200-ACF using the modified Magnilux MX-1 Afocal Adapter with a Meade 1.25" 26mm eyepiece (77X). Took this photo of the Moon at 1833 MST:

Added a Meade 3X TeleXtender to yield 231X. Took this iPhone photo (cropped) of the craters Theophilus, Cyrillus, and Catharina:

Seeing had improved somewhat by this time. This is a stack of 1676 video frames from a slo-mo (120 fps) video using Keith's Image Stacker for comparison to the single frame image above:

Also did a normal iPhone video recording of the craters. Click the (mirrored) image below to view the 9 second video (9 MB):

Click or tap on image to see video

Resumed lunar observing, 77X. Noticed that a faint star was about to be occulted by the Earthlit portion of the Moon. Watched it get occulted at the northern limb at 192006 MST.

1925 MST: quick look at Jupiter, 83X.

Close: Wednesday, 25 March 2015, 1934 MST Temperature: 65°F

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A local newspaper has now published an article about this past Saturday's big celebration:

Oracle State Park celebrates Dark Sky designation, new director

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