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Drove out about 12 miles into the desert tonight thinking the following ...Bortle class 4 is better than my class 7 backyard, No 2 story house blocking my eastern view and no huge elm tree blocking my view from the NW to N view.
No such luck! My SSA wouldn't auto align. It wouldn't manual align. All it did was scan the heavens then tell me that alignment wasn't good enough, and it failed :flame:.
Decided to just manually track Jupiter and Saturn. Easy enough, right...NOT! Winds were pretty stiff, and seeing was nonexistent! Oh, I found Jupiter, but couldn't focus at all. Just a big blob with smaller blobs close by.
I'm bummed... :sigh:
Oh, almost forgot to mention, we had a 5.0 earthquake at 20:16 hours, followed by a 7.1 at 20:19, followed by a 5.5 at 20:47 and a 5.4 at 21:18. All this, following the 6.4 we had yesterday at around 10:35. We're just-a-rock'n-n- roll'n here. These are all about 80 miles, as the crow flies, NE of where I live!
Shucks. I hate it when that happens. Better luck next time. I'm sitting here with my morning Joe just imagining how bad that would have sucked.
I hope you get another oppty soon.
Jeff
Jeff
Dad Joke King (ask my kids); Cereal killer
Orion Skyview pro 8 f5.
Binos: Polaris/wingspan 8x42 Ed/HD
Wow - rough night - we all have bad one though (Well, I suspect most of us do not have the earthquakes involved with ours). Keep on keeping on, and stay safe.
-- Brett
Scope: Apertura AD10 with Nexus II with 8192/716000 Step Encoders EPs: ES 82* 18mm, 11mm, 6.7mm; GSO 30mm Celestron SkyMaster 15x70 Binoculars List Counts:Messier: 75;Herschel 400: 30;Caldwell: 12; AL Carbon Star List: 16 Brett's Carbon Star Hunt
Sorry you had a tough go of it. The earthquakes (hey, why are the aftershocks bigger than the original?) are an interesting wrinkle - we don't get too many reports that include that feature. May your next venture be more fruitful!
Sorry about the earthquakes in SoCal. One of the latest theories on these is that hot weather interacts with levels of groundwater to cause plate slippage. So in a sense, there is earthquake weather. The Loma Prieta quake was on a very hot day many years ago. So was the 1907 SF earthquake.
-Michael Refractors: ES AR152 f/6.5 Achromat on Twilight II, Celestron 102mm XLT f/9.8 on Celestron Heavy Duty Alt Az mount, KOWA 90mm spotting scope Binoculars: Celestron SkyMaster 15x70, Bushnell 10x50 Eyepieces: Various, GSO Superview, 9mm Plossl, Celestron 25mm Plossl Camera: ZWO ASI 120 Naked Eye: Two Eyeballs Latitude: 48.7229° N
Sorry about the rough night but, on the bright side, you only have to travel 12 miles to lose 3 Bortles????
Did you input the new coordinates into the scope?
For visual:
10" Skywatcher collapsible goto dob, various EP's and a Celestron StarSense auto align.
For imaging:
Orion 8" astrograph 800mm @ F3.9
Eq6-R Pro controlled by APT via EQmod with an OTA mounted mini PC
Tele Vue Paracorr Type 2 coma corrector
Altair Hypercam 26C
As to the rough night, I was in an small ravine/wash about 100 feet wide with a small hill, maybe 25 or 30 feet high, to the east, and a little larger hill, maybe fifty feet high, to the west. Over the eastern hill was the light dome from Lancaster/Palmdale. South of me were the foothills and mountains separating us from the L.A. basin, so it was still pretty light polluted in those directions. The north was pretty good, sloping downward for about 2 miles, to the valley floor. No obstructions, and next to no light dome. Yep, verified the time on my HC, and set the lat/long as well. Everything looked ok. I'm hoping it was just the atmosphere. Heat, wind, smog, dust, haze, etc., and the SSA just couldn't focus any better than I could when looking at Jupiter. Those hills just may not be an ideal place after all.
As for the quakes...according to Google Earth, the epicenter(s) were roughly 80 miles NE of us. There was no mistaking the 6.4 on the 4th. It was a real rocker! The ones last night...I had just parked, and was setting up my equipment, and I didn't feel anything. My car was swaying a little, but I thought it was just being roughed up by the wind. My son and DIL felt them though, and how! They were upstairs, and he said they grabbed my granddaughter and headed for the door jambs. He called me to see if I was all right, and I had no idea what he was talking about. He said he had been trying to call me for about 15 minutes and not able to get through. I guess all the cell circuits were jammed. Duh! My ex brother-in-law called me about a minute after I talked to my son, wanting to know if we were alright. He lives about half the distance from the quakes as we do. He had the same problem, of not being able to get through on the phone. They're alright, and we're alright though, just shaken. I'm not a callous person, but I'm thankful the quakes weren't centered in the coastal areas from L.A. to San Diego. The damage could have been so much worse!
