Twenty years ago on 10 September 2004 my wife and I visited some property on the west side of Oracle to see if it would be right for us as our "retirement land". It was and we bought it! After I retired we finally got our home built and moved in summer of 2009. This photo shows a portion of the land on that day in 2004.

Tuesday, 10 September, clouds appeared mid-day. A small wildfire started 3 miles north of Cassiopeia Observatory on Tuesday. It was fully contained on Wednesday, 11 September. Unfortunately, smoke from wildfires in Arizona and southern California impacted the sky here, so I did not open the observatory Wednesday night. This was the setting Sun.

On Thursday, 12 September, two of my southern Indiana hometown school classmates visited. I showed them the observatory. After dinner at a restaurant, I was hoping that we would get to see the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The launch occurred shortly after our sunset and so the sky was still very bright. As we were driving away from the restaurant I saw the 2nd stage near Venus. I managed to get this photo from the car.

After we got back home the sky was darker and the rocket plume was nice in the western sky with Venus at the left in the photo.

We then went to the observatory where Jerry and John were able to see a few objects in the bright moonlit sky.

Open: Thursday, 12 September 2024, 1950 MST Temperature: 80°F

Session: 2009 Conditions: Clear

Equipment:
12" f/8 LX600 w/StarLock
2" 24mm UWA eyepiece
2" 9mm 100° eyepiece
2" 50mm eyepiece
2" 30mm eyepiece

Camera:
iPhone 15 Pro Max

2002 MST: LX600 ON, StarLock OFF, High Precision OFF.

John and Jerry were able to view the following objects through the 12" telescope:

M17 (Swan Nebula), 102X
Saturn, 271X
M13 (Great Globular Cluster in Hercules), 102X
Double Cluster (open star clusters), 102X
M31 (Andromeda Galaxy), and its satellite galaxies M32 and M110, 102X
M57 (Ring Nebula), 102X
Albireo (colorful double star), 102X
Moon, 102X and 271X

As a demonstration of smartphone imaging, I took this handheld afocal 102X image of the Moon using my iPhone 15 Pro Max (Camera app, 1X lens).

Both Jerry and John preferred that I take photos of the Moon with their older model iPhones. The field-of-view of these older phones was a lot smaller than my iPhone 15 Pro Max, so I first tried a 50mm eyepiece (49X), but that didn't work out. I then used a 30mm eyepiece (81X) and took handheld photos of the Moon using their phones.

They left the observatory about 2200 MST. It was wonderful spending time with my two classmates. They had some good experiences here.

2216 MST: LX600 OFF.

Close: Thursday, 12 September 2024, 2225 MST Temperature: 76°F

Session Length: 2h 35m Conditions: Clear

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