Here's another astronomy-related entry! These will probably become more frequent from now on, although not quite so frequent that they drown out the writing content. Scroll down to the bottom if it's writing updates you're after ;)

-----<>-----

We spotted Mars glowing in the sky tonight, despite the cloud drifts that kept passing by. There were plenty of stars out too, so I was pleased to finally give the telescope a good workout.

In short order we got the telescope out, and I was busily lining up Mars in the finder scope. I confirmed that the cross-hairs don't line up with what the telescope is actually looking at, so I had to play it by ear and pan around a bit. I'll have to fix that later ;)

Through a 25mm eyepiece, it looked like a red/orange tinted star, but definitely an unusual one. I increased the magnification to the limit (with the lenses I had on hand, anyway) with the 10mm eyepiece and the 2x barlow, making the view equivalent to that through a 5mm eyepiece. It was larger, but still blurry.

They say it's hard to see detail on Mars at the best of times, and this evening was definitely not ideal, with the cloud cover and general haze. I may also need to collimate (ie align primary and secondary mirrors) the telescope properly to get a sharper image. It looked a bit off the other day when I checked with the laser collimator, but I didn't have a tiny allen key to adjust the secondary mirror. You'd think they'd include one with the scope, seeing as how the instructions call for one. I'll have to dig one up from somewhere.

After we viewed Mars through an Orion Skyglow filter (not much different) and a red filter (Mars, but redder!), Carrie went back inside, leaving me to pan around the night sky using the 25mm and 40mm lenses. I saw lots of stars, but with the cloudy conditions it was hard to make out any constellations, let alone zoom in on any deep space objects (nebulas, galaxies, etc). Satisfied with an hour or so of viewing time, I removed the telescope from the base and put everything away.

-----<>-----

While I was going for my run on the treadmill tonight, I had a few story ideas pop into my head for the upcoming anthology. It's hard to say if they'll lead to anything, but I have narrowed the scope a little further, so that ought to make the task slightly less overwhelming.

I'll give this project priority for now, in the hope that I can get it done over the weekend. The clock is ticking....