session from last week

I wanted to catch up a bit on a back yard session last Thursday night 5/26.  I started with some astrometric calibration, which I haven't been able to do much of because of a long streak of poor conditions.  I worked on 24 Coma Berenices, which is a pretty orange and blue pair, much like Alberio, and 90 Leonis, My separation measures seem to be ok but my position angle is off by 10 or 20 degrees -- the readings are not consistent.  I must reread how to set up the scale and the pointer, maybe change it to something stiffer. 

I then did some double star wandering, one of my favorite things to do, going double to double in my atlas:

17 Virginis, widely separated, large magnitude difference, with a yellow-white A and a ruddy / brownish B

Anonymous near tip of triangle of stars to the east of Theta Virginis: A line of three stars, could be triple?  The magnitudes progress from brightest A to medium B to faint C -- a Goldilocks triple?

Anon west of Theta Virginis: another wide separation, orange A and 1-2 magnitude less bright blue B

SS Virginis: Nice to see this in better conditions.  Red in finder while centered on Zaniah.  Bright orange in the scope.  Big difference without the moon and in decent transparency.

M61: Bright nucleus, but rest is a haze, just a hint of a round faint glow. 

I ended the night on Jupiter, which was lovely.  Both NEB and SEB had darker barges -- the NEB's were more elongated, the SEB's were oval.  The Southern polar region is darker than the northern, but the northern is more uniform and comes right to the edge of the NEB.  There is a cream-colored gap between the S polar region and the SEB.