Clouds arrived mid-afternoon on Saturday, 12 March 2022. Sunday, 13 March, began clear and calm, but clouds and wind returned mid-day. The clouds were gone by sunset, but the wind continued. Monday, 14 March, was clear but hazy.

Open: Monday, 14 March 2022, 1809 MST Temperature: 82°F

Session: 1734 Conditions: Clear, hazy

Equipment:
12" f/8 LX600 w/StarLock
12x50 binoculars
2" 24mm UWA eyepiece
Binoviewers 20mm, 26mm eyepieces
2" 5.5mm 100° UWA eyepiece

Camera:
iPhone 13 Pro Max

As a test for future use, I mounted my Vortex 12x50 binoculars piggyback on the 12" telescope using the ScopeStuff Camera Mount. Seemed to work well.

1818 MST: LX600 ON, StarLock OFF, High Precision OFF.

Viewed the waxing gibbous Moon, 102X.

Took this handheld iPhone 13 Pro Max afocal 102X photo of the Moon in the bright blue sky using NightCap Camera (ISO 34, 1/710sec, 1X lens).

I then viewed the Moon using the William Optics Binoviewers to view the Moon, 122X. I swapped the WO 20mm eyepieces for two Meade 26mm eyepieces to yield 94X. I was hoping to get the entire lunar disk in the field-of-view but could not. It was still a nice view though.

1830 MST: Sunset.

Next, I removed the binoviewers and did some lunar observing, 443X. Although seeing was not quite good enough for that high magnification, the views at times were nice.

Handheld iPhone afocal 443X photo of the crater Tycho using NightCap Camera (ISO 200, 1/120sec, 1X).

A shadow in the crater Phocylides looked really neat. It was a straight line, as seen in this handheld iPhone afocal 443X photo of the crater Phocylides using NightCap Camera (ISO 200, 1/120sec, 1X). Unfortunately, seeing had deteriorated even more.

1905 MST: LX600 OFF.

Close: Monday, 14 March 2022, 1911 MST Temperature: 65°F

Session Length: 1h 02m Conditions: Clear, hazy

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I hate it when I get an email asking for some help and when I reply my message gets returned to me as "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender". Everytime this happens the reason is the sender's reply-to email is of the form "outlook_abunchofcharacters@outlook.com". (Glad I don't use Outlook.) I always search online for an alternative email address and sometimes I get lucky. But this time I wasn't. I was contacted by a "Bob Bedell" who had seen my Smartphone Astrophotography article in the November 2021 issue of Astronomy Magazine and asked for some help with smartphone astrophotography. I provided the requested information in my email reply to him, but the Outlook-formatted reply-to address was bad. Anyone know him? If you do, please ask him to email me again using a different non-Outlook address.

For Windows users, this seems to be a common problem with Microsoft Outlook. In fact, it is so common that Microsoft even has a web page explaining it:

Outlook.com email account appears as "outlook_[long series of letters and numbers]@outlook.com" in Outlook for Windows

Unfortunately, only the user that sends an email with the bad address can fix it. And of course, the recipient of the bad email can't tell the sender. Sheesh. Great job Microsoft.

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