planets

Last night I felt pretty tired, still recovering from my vacation.  So did not work on the 20" but used the 8" f7 to casually look at a few things.  Seeing sharpened after 10pm but by then I needed to go to bed; I will need to adjust my schedule, somehow, to observe during the better times.

Jupiter was nice, with the GRS beginning to emerge during dusk and moving into better view as the evening progressed.  There were two Galilean moons (Europa & Ganymede) on one side and a third (Io) on the other, and very curiously, a fourth (Callisto) sitting below the limb at a very close separation.  I watched it move further along as the evening progressed, which confirmed it as a moon.  The orbit must be steeply inclined to our view for us to see it transit without even crossing the disk.

Saturn was nice, with more moons (total of four) appearing as it grew darker.  Cassini gap visible later in the night.  Could see multiple color bands.

The Double Double in Lyra was split, but there was some flaring in the star light.  I noticed some problem with my collimation (position of the secondary under the focuser) which I will need to fix, along with all the other projects I have going.

M57 appeared fairly large, and annular shaped, and brightened with averted vision.

M4 was very faint and hardly visible, though it was in the San Jose light dome.

M80 appeared as a hazy round glow, compact globular

M22 was a shadow of itself.

I did get a tentative split of Antares, at 177x and while using my planetary filter since I failed to remove it...