Sunday night I didn't open up hjro although it was clear out

Tonight my back was sore and it seemed pretty cold out. I like to open up and star gaze, but because I was feeling under the weather, I decided to stay out of the observatory.

I decided instead to grab a couple small personal telescopes and use them at my house. I wanted to just grab a quick view of the sky. I was primarily interested in looking at Mars, hoping to see it with a high power view.

I grabbed my Nexstar 4se and took a low and high powered eyepiece out. Aiming the next star 4se at mars, with a 32mm showed a well defined disk.

When I dropped the 8mm eyepiece in for a high powered view I was met with a bright fuzzy dancing orange colored object. Not exactly a great view. There was a slight cold breeze out and frost on nearby cars. The view was better with the lower powered eyepiece. I also looked at m42 and saw better views from the 32mm eyepiece again. Streetlights and neighbors lights didn't help much.

I then grabbed my little f4 four inch rich field scope to do some handheld wide field viewing. I took a 32mm eyepiece and 25mm eyepiece. Keep in mind the view is very wide for this telescope, so it's like looking through a binocular, or one side of one and easy to use handheld without a tripod. But this limits one to low power.

I also took my canon camera out to take a few photos of myself looking at the night sky. Below is one or two photos.

(I'll post more about the HJRO list later.)

With the 32mm eyepiece in I looked at m45 and m42 and mars briefly. M45 was nice at low power. I spent most of my time setting up the camera and taking photos with the self timer. Handling the camera and camera tripod without gloves meant I would be touching cold metal at times, this caused me to feel colder, faster.

After looking at m45 I had enough of the cold and decided to put away the scopes and head inside to warmer surroundings.

I took my iPad to White Castle in Lincoln Park and imported a few stills from the camera to post them here.

Below, standing on the deck, ramp looking toward mars.



It's darker in the back yard, less street lights to interfere, although some lights from the other streets. Below I'm looking up toward m42, m45 the seven sisters, can be seen over the top of the house.

M45 is near the center of the photo the mast of the tv antenna almost points to it in this photo.

These photos are 8 second exposures at iso 3200c





Below, Grabbing the small f4 white telescope, I walk through one of the exposures. The telescope looks like it's still standing there because it was there for about four seconds during the exposure, sitting on the railing. By the end of the shot it was in front of me out of view as I was looking away.



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