The warmest season is also ironically the least friendly to backyard astronomy, at least at this far north. The long days that bring us warm temperatures and lush greenery try their darndest to hold the night at bay. But the seasons are just that seasons, and now summer is getting ready to yield the stage to autumn.
We are now losing about three minutes of daylight per day. In the St Paul / Minneapolis area, we had about two and a half hours of evening twilight in the first day of summer. That is now down to under two hours. Couple that with an 8:15 sunset, and we can now get out and observe before having to call it a day.
The last week has also had a near full moon. This made for a good time to get the scopes ready for the longer nights ahead. The big project for both was getting their zero power finders up and running. These finders project a light on a clear screen that is used to get the scope pointed in the right general area so you can then use the optical finder of the larger scope or the scope itself to starhop to your target. Apparently I had left the batteries of both of these on over the summer, so I had to do a little digging around the house to find new ones. The finders will both need to be aligned again before use.
The other project I've been working on has been to reacquaint myself with how objects appear in the eyepiece. In binoculars and cameras, objects appear like they do to the naked eye. Astronomical telescopes do not contain the extra prisms and lenses to pull this off. Furthermore, the reflector turns everything in the eyepiece upside down, where as the refractor just makes a mirror image of them. This'll make a good topic for another post.
Until then, hope you have clear skies.
