Our Kiwi relations have been and gone, and a procession of 20-year old boys sated with the skies, I found myself with fantastic seeing, and plenty of time. Even if it was a school night.

And turns out I have now gotten rather adept at alignment, both polar and star. And man, getting that right makes everything so much sweeter. I had already planned my evening’s viewing, and pretty much stuck to it. Yeah yeah, doubles…

Valerie observed for a bit too, but mostly it was me and Lyra. Then I decided to try and capture again. Of course, I spent quite a lot of time at the eyepiece, teasing out more and more detail. Alas, given it was indeed a weekday, having to get up for work the next…later the same day, it didn’t really get dark enough for me to get the dense(r) star field I wanted as a backdrop.

But it didn’t turn out that bad. Next time I will use C-A’s camera.

η and θ Lyrae

Flickr version, as ever.

η (and θ) Lyrae were both deserving targets. And not listed in my GOTO database, so I tried just putting in the RA/dec, and seeing how the mount coped. Wonderfully! Even with the close eyepiece, it was view as soon as she slew. I know people think it a cheat, but really, it is a boon. So much more time spent seeing, and not shifting, nudging and frustratingly not finding what you are looking for.

A little bit of planning helps, too. Then again, I just love looking through star atlases and catalogues. Quite a few are available free as PDFs, but you can’t beat paper ones.

I even set up this evening, but after zeta Lyrae, it started to cloud over. Ah well…