Solar System Observing
A fter a mostly sleepless night the night before last with some health issues that kept me in the bathroom and seriously cut into my sleep, I managed to get some sleep yesterday afternoon for about three or four hours in preparation of a clear night last night. Clear nights around here are few and far between any time of year but especially in the November through March timeframe so I don't like to waste these rare nights, if possible. This meant a relatively rare opportunity for viewing some objects in our solar system. As the sky darkened to a deep dark blue, I set up a new telescope of mine that I have been evaluating as an option for beginners. I had three eyepieces on hand; a low power wide eyepiece, a medium power eyepiece, and a high power eyepiece. I also had my Sony a6000 camera ready to go with a nosepiece on it so I could slide the camera into the diagonal in place of an eyepiece when I felt the view was worthy of recording. Facing the back end of our backyard in