Saturday, 30 June 2018, was clear. I attended a telescope raffle and star party at Oracle State Park. See my report of the event on the Oracle Dark Skies Committee web site.

I was then on travel until Tuesday, 10 July. Most of the nights were clear when I was away. Argh. But as the trip neared its end, our Monsoon Season began kicking in. A thunderstorm occurred at night on 8 July with lightning (as seen by my webcam):

Wednesday, 11 July, about mid-day there was this nice thunderstorm to the west:

A piece of a rainbow was visible on another webcam late Thursday afternoon, 12 July:

Rain totals:
8 July: 0.11", 10 July: 0.41", 11 July: 0.03", 12 July: 0.28", 13 July: 0.06", 14 July: 0.004", 15 July: 0.11".

My new Tele Vue 2" 4X Powermate arrived during this Monsoon Season cloudy period. I will post a review once I have a chance to work with it.

The sky partially cleared Sunday afternoon, 15 July. I had hoped to open the observatory to do some 4X Powermate visual tests, but as sunset approached the sky became mostly cloudy.

I was able to photograph the close conjunction of Venus and the Moon (1° 47') after sunset. This is an iPhone 8 Plus photo of my Nikon D850 DSLR + Tamron 150-600mm lens (at a focal length of 600mm) mounted on the iOptron SkyTracker Pro. The DSLR shows a live view of the Moon, which is also seen in the sky.

This D850 DSLR photo was taken with a new Nikon 50mm lens (f/8, 1/30sec, ISO 400) 30 minutes after sunset. Venus and the Moon are in the upper left corner.

With Nikon back on the SkyTracker Pro, this cropped photo (f/8, 1/50sec, ISO 400, FL 600mm) shows Venus and the crescent Moon:

Clouds were beginning to cover Venus and the Moon when I made this attempt to show Earthshine (f/8, 1/10sec, ISO 1600, FL 600mm):

I ended my Venus-Moon conjunction photography at 2010 MST due to the clouds. It was a pretty sight.

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Check out the new items I purchased from InkPixi:

Cassiopeia Observatory T-Shirt 30 June 2018	Cassiopeia Observatory Shirt 30 June 2018	Cassiopeia Observatory Polo Shirt 30 June 2018
	Cassiopeia Observatory Cap 30 June 2018

The graphic couldn't be changed but the name on the Polo Shirt and Cap are nicely embroidered.

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