Sorry but HJRO wasn't open, at least not by Greg tonight.

I decided to go to a lower horizon site. This meant, Meijers parking lot hill, actually the pumping station parking lot on the hill by Meijers in Allen Park Michigan.

My goal was to quickly view Mercury and the crescent moon after sunset. I looked at the moon before sunset. I probably could have viewed mercury from HJRO today because it was 22 degrees above the horizon near sunset. But I was in Allen Park.

I sent out an email to some FAAC members and called a few in case they happened to be near Allen Park and wanted to drop by.

My day was too busy to plan observing tonight.

I spent the few hours in Allen park chatting with visitors and Rick Arzadon who showed up and saw Mercury as well. We looked at Mercury with fairly low power, at 36 power through the vixen binocular telescope the view was nice, but of course Mercury is a small planet and I would have had a much better view with a Big Bertha, the ten inch Newtonian. I wasn't sure conditions would allow viewing Mercury with the string of clouds that were out there. So I just used the grab and go vixen telescope.

Rick brought out his small Maksutov telescope, but reported views of Mercury were not that good.

One visitor asked me how much I paid for the vixen BT-80s and took a picture of them. I let him know what I paid for them. He seemed ready to go out and buy a pair right then and there. He enjoyed the view of the moon. The moon looks awesome through the vixen binocular telescope. And the Televue plossl eyepieces really help for most objects as well over the stock eyepeces. Tv plossl eyepieces cost 100 to 150 a piece, so I may be looking through $300 in eyepieces as well as the Vixen. My mount is still a bit shaky but this will change in a few weeks, because I'm getting adapters for an old sturdy video tripod that I've never modified. That beefy mount was designed for industrial video cameras and can handle 23 lb loads with awesome smoothness and precise counterbalance controls. So I will be having a lot more fun with e vixen binoculars in the near future, when I will be able to aim them close to the meridian without fear of them moving around and tilting off target.

Here's a photo. I took a lot of sunset photos for HDR tests. This is a photo from the iPhone, no HDR processing in this one. I'll post actual HDR processed photos to post later.

Greg

(The moon peeks from behind the clouds. Vixen aimed at the moon, shortly before my first view of Mercury this year.)


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