Observing: Sirius & TV85

Time to see how the Sirius does now that I can actually see Polaris to do a proper polar alignment. Been a while since I used this mount but it went pretty easily without me having to dig out the manual - good thing, too, because I have no idea where that is.

At around 9pm it was just dark enough to see Polaris through the polar alignment scope. As we've learned, this must be done with the power off because the illuminating LED is worse than useless. Without leveling the tripod, I just dialed in the mount and fired it up. Picking alignment stars was a snap; Alpheratz, Fomalhaut and Vega worked for me. Then it put every object I tried into the FOV of the LVW 13mm. Life is good.

Not a serious observing session, just wanted to get used to the EQ mount again before I break out the 5-inch and the cameras and see if I have better luck with imaging than I've had so far with visual here in Waco. Had a look at Jupiter, M15, M22, M27, M57 - none very exciting in the small scope. Open clusters fared better; the Double Cluster (with LVW 42mm) and Pleiades (with LVW 22mm) were nice, while M29 was... small. The batter pack started running dry around 11:30 so I packed it in.

Things to do:

• Generate some new observing lists in Astroplanner.
• Upgrade to new version of Nebulosity and get the DSI going.
• Talk to neighbors, assure them that I'm not a weirdo who stands around in the backyard at night waiting for the mother ship to return and take me back to my home planet.