Category: Astronomy

There were six folks at Ka’ohe last night to greet the dark skies. Clouds loomed dark overhead when we arrived, but that is no reason to give up here. As normal for this site the skies cleared shortly after sunset and we had great skies much of the night.

In anticipation of planet viewing I brought the NexStar 11″ GPS with its three meter focal length. Some care was taken to collimate properly it at the start of the evening.

Views of the planets were nice, the seeing was OK, but not great. Venus nearly at perfect half phase and will waning to a crescent over the coming month. A moon shadow crossing the disk of Jupiter was clearly visible. Saturn was quite nice, the rings are beautifully tilted open for the next few years.

Mars is still badly obscured by the dust, only the polar cap being clearly seen with vague light and dark areas beyond that. I even took a peek at Neptune.

Continue reading “A Night of Bright Planets and a Few Meteors”