Open: Tuesday, 17 November 2015, 1815 MST Temperature: 49°F

Session: 882 Conditions: Mostly clear, clouds in northwest

1822 MST: viewed the Moon, 83X and 166X. Seeing was not very good. I then mounted the iPhone 6s Plus on the 8" LX200-ACF for afocal imaging using the Orion SteadyPix Universal Smartphone Telescope Photo Mount. This was taken at 77X:

Added the Televue 2X PowerMate for these photos along the terminator, north to south, 154X:

Switched back to 77X. This is how the Moon via the iOS Camera app looked live on the Apple Watch:

I then did a 5 minute livestream on Twitter using the Periscope app. During the broadcast a jet airplane crossed the Moon:

Click or tap on image for 19 second video with audio

1910 MST: I then switched to the 2" Baader 8-24mm Zoom Eyepiece and did some lunar terminator touring at 250X (8mm). Even with the poor seeing there were some nice views. The rille Rima Ariadaeus was especially nice, as seen in the center of this handheld iPhone 6s Plus photo (cropped), afocal 250X:

1935 MST: while I was doing some lunar observing at 83X I saw an illuminated satellite transit the Moon. It was in a polar orbit. I did some research on Heavens-Above and discovered that the satellite was the Cosmos 1536 rocket booster:

The airplane and satellite transits this evening made up for not being able to capture the Chinese space station Tiangong-1 transit the Sun that morning, as I reported on 17 November 2015.

1950 MST: switched back to the 2" Meade 24mm UWA eyepiece (83X) and took a final look at the Moon.

Close: Tuesday, 17 November 2015, 2005 MST Temperature: 39°F

Session Length: 1h 50m Conditions: Mostly clear

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