father's day eve observing

Last night I repeated some of the observations of Thursday night, but the seeing was rather worse.  We were having a camp-out in the backyard so I was somewhat distracted, too.

Jupiter at 340x was a little mushy.  The GRS was nearly midway through transit, and I could clearly see two thirds of the oval were darkened.  There was a surprisingly dark medium size lenticular barge in the NEB nearly below the GRS's position.  Preceding it was a bright oval on the northern edge of the belt. 

I tried the same series of Virgo doubles as Thursday but without any more success.  The moon was nearly full and the transparency spread its light across the sky -- so I had little hope of seeing the very faint pairs.  I experimented with the 5-inch off-axis mask: it really helped steady the star images and made very nice tight Airy disks, but it also hurt resolution so that the fainter stars were more difficult.  I suppose it is best used for tight pairs of similar magnitude. 

I observed Mars for a while, at 340x with the apodising screen and planetary filter.  By now the seeing was a little better and I saw about as much detail as Thursday, of the same features, but with the planet rotated a little to the east. 

As I was staying out a little longer, past 11pm, Antares and Saturn cleared the tree.  While the seeing was not great I gave Antares a try.  The apodising screen steadied the seeing but the star was a little jumpy.  I tried the off-axis mask and it helped to better steady the star; but still no companion star.  Finally I used a blue filter with the off-axis mask, and all the diffraction disappeared.  It was spooky how it did that.  After a while I could discern a very faint concentration -- it wasn't really a stellar point -- to the WNW fairly close to the star.  I suppose it was the "B", which is in 277 degree PA now and 2.59" separated.  I'll call it a possible sighting, but I'm not particularly confident about it.  However, I am impressed with off-axis masks and will make one for my 20-inch to play around with.  With the 20-inch's focal ratio, an 8-inch mask will be f/14! 

Finally I observed Saturn.  It was best with the apodising screen and with my boundary layer fan on -- Cassini division and Enke's minima, and some darkening in the D ring.  Lots of color in the planet.

I might not have the opportunity to observe tonight, but Monday is predicted to be above average for seeing and transparency, so I'm hopeful for better views to come.