Viewing Notes
September 9, 2001
Sonoita Highway/Sahuarita Road
(25 miles SE of Tucson, AZ)
Obsession 20" f/5 reflector

I went out to a local observing site that frequented by staff members of Starizona. It's not the greatest dark sky site because of the sky glow from Tucson to the northwest, but it's relatively close by - and better than from my house. This was one of the first times (other than a Messier marathon) that I had a specific viewing agenda: Neptune, Uranus, minor planet 5 Astraea (all in Capricornus at the time) and some lesser known NGC objects in Cassiopaeia. I also wanted to be home by midnight so I could get a few hours sleep before getting up for the Moon's occultation of Saturn, and then on to work.

I arrived at the site around 7:30 p.m. and was viewing by 8 p.m. I actually managed to mount the telescope onto the platform without using any guides. This took about 2 seconds - mostly due to luck. Even so, I've pretty much mastered the art of mounting the telescope onto the platform's center pin, routinely completing the operation in less than 15 seconds.

It was a fairly warm evening and I didn't have to run the fan for much longer than about 45 minutes. First up was Mars. At 130x the planet was about 60% phased with the north polar cap barely visible. Not much other detail was seen.

Neptune was fairly easy to spot, easily visible in 10x30 binoculars. Magnification of 130x showed small disk shape, confirming that I was actually looking at a planet rather than a star. Conditions were good enough to allow me to push the magnification to 560x which really brought out the orb shape. The color was light blue against a very black background. The platform performed great, again with only a crude "general direction of Polaris" alignment.

Uranus was the next object and was also fairly easy to spot with 10x30 binoculars. The planet's disk shape could be seen at 130x and was fairly large at 560x. I spent almost 15 minutes viewing with this magnification. The planet was a medium blue orb again against a velvet black background. I haven't yet mastered the art of estimating apparent diameter so I don't really know exactly how big they were in the eyepiece (Uranus was about 1/8" in diameter at the eyepiece, for what that is worth). I used a 9mm Nagler and a Televue Big Barlow for the 560x set-up.

I also viewed the minor planet, 5 Astraea. This was about 7.5 arc minutes north of the magnitude 6 star, GSC 6350:887 (according to TheSky v5). I wasn't able to resolve any shape or structure, even at 560x.

I spent the rest of the evening looking for objects in Cassiopeia. NGC 281 was a fairly faint nebula that was best viewed with an O-III filter. There were two dark dust lanes perpendicular to each other that ran through the center of the nebulosity. I tried to view without the filter but much of the nebulosity was lost.

The Moon rose about 11:35 and was a good sign for reminding me to pack up. By the time I was driving Saturn was up and about 20° from the Moon. In about 5 hours the Moon would be passing in front of Saturn.