Went out on my first Jupiter/Saturn mission last evening. They're following the path of the Sun - in Jupiter-Saturn order, local sunset for me was 16:44 EST, and:
http://in-the-sky.org/data/planets.php?day=11&month=12&year=2020
Objects in your sky: The planets - In-The-Sky.org
said the sky would darken enough for them to appear at 17:03 and 17:21 respectively.
Sky was about as clear as one could hope for, temperature was pretty mild, loaded up all the weaponry, dressed, rolled at sunset to:
39°03'02.83" N 076°39'08.30" W
to get away from the trees and give my what I thought would be a good horizon. Found out upon arrival that there was some high terrain which screwed me out of the hoped for horizon but set up and started looking anyway.
On the iPhone I have Skywalk 2. It identifies your location, gives you a sky map, guides you to your selected target - position the phone accordingly and you're looking at the same sky on the real deal and your display.
Although it's worked great in the past it was totally demented on this occasion and was guiding me way the hell to the west of sunset and below the horizon so I tossed that and switched to freestyle mode.
While the light was fading and I was striking out an assembly of untold hundreds of noisy Canada Geese were heading south to my west for bedtime quarters.
I'd gotten it in my head that the planets would be pretty low on the horizon but things were still pretty light down there and I was getting zilch in the way of anything shining through. (Using the 95 millimeter scope at 30 power.) So I started going higher where the sky got progressively darker to see what it would take and... OH! WOW! (If it had been a snake...)
Jupiter and its Galilean Moons - Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto - Saturn and its rings. Brilliant, beautifully lit, reddish bands of the former and separation between the planet and rings on the latter, both in the field of view with the scope at minimum zoom. WAY higher than I'd been expecting but still a very comfortable viewing angle.
Relocated back down to:
39°02'53.22" N 076°39'05.09" W
in the ballpark of my usual area and played around a bit more. Tons of cars going by, at least a quarter of them would've known what I was doing, nobody stopped. That bit was a little depressing.
Packed up and drove home, the pair was still blazing through the leafless tree branches at the top of the driveway. Lit up the laptop and went to Wikipedia to educate myself more about my targets. Tried to see if I could recalibrate Skywalk and return it to functionality.
Pretty solid overcast at present this morning, long term forecast is rather crappy but says I have a good shot Friday, supposed to do the Lower Kent Christmas Bird Count Sunday in shit weather, Great Conjunction Monday (also the Solstice) is looking grim...
Do what you can while you can with this one.
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2020/12/12 19:50:00 UTC
Cleared up pretty good, will probably score again this evening. Long term forecast has gotten less dismal - 2020/12/18 looks good, 2020/12/21 not bad.
Played with the iPhone a fair bit. I think there was an issue with the magnetic compass, did some recalibration stuff...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86yUpUt8U6s
The REAL iPhone Compass Calibration Tutorial
Benjohn Barnes - 2010/06/08
Seems to be working OK now.
