2016/09/21
8:45 PM

Weather
Light clouds, 75 Fahrenheit, 70% humidity

cleardarksky.com forecast:
Transparency 2/5, seeing 3/5

Equipment:
Naked eye

Objects observed:
Saturn, Mars, Antares, Rasalhague, Rasalgethi, Vega

Since visiting the dark sky site, the Red Dot Finder has been inoperable so for now the telescope is temporarily retired. I hope to fix this within the next week as a "planetary eyepiece" will be acquired, increasing my maximum magnification to 200x. Tonight I opted to take a brieft survey of the sky to assess what's possible under local light pollution levels.

The limiting naked eye visual magnitude tonight was approximately 3.5. This was evidenced by a strained but easy observation of Rasalgethi. If cleardarksky is to be trusted, the winter months should be much more forgiving for amateur stargazers.

Expect updates on the quality of the planetary eyepiece soon.