Date Time: November 19, 2014 1630-2120hrs
Weather: Clear, windy at 1600hrs, wind slowly died down to nothing by 1900hrs. -2 degrees Celsius, felt like -8 degrees Celsius according to weather station.. Upper atmosphere disturbed.
Attendance: Maddison and McKenzie, Leah, Jessica, Rebecca, Carla and Myself.
Equipment: Canon xsi dslr with 75-300mm and 18-55mm lenses piggybacked to 8" Meade LX 200 telescope with goto and tracking capabilities. Eyepieces 32mm, 12.5mm and 4mm. Ioptron cellphone adapter and nexus 4 cellphone camera and video.
Objective: To attempt to image anything with new cellphone adapter.
Report: Main highlight was a Bolide (fireball) that streaked straight down, due south of my position on the front porch at 2020hrs. It was very bright and went very low behind the trees when it flashed and completely lit up the entire dark night for a second. Could actually hear a quiet hissing, searing sound and could see a smoke trail for an instant, from the flash!
1830 hrs cellphone video of Mars was taking using new cellphone adapter. It worked fine, but because Mars is so far away in its orbit right now, no detail could be found when the video was processed in stacked. Earth will get closer to Mars next summer and we might get better detail then.
Showed Mars with 12.5mm eyepiece to Maddison and McKenzie, Leah, Jessica, Rebecca. They all seemed impressed with everyone wondering if the planet was 'on fire'. Carla viewed the cellphone video and seemed impressed.
Used piggybacked dslr camera to capture images of a closeup of M45, Cassiopeia, Perseus Double Cluster, M31, Cygnus, The Summer Triangle, Delphinus, Taurus, and Orion.
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| This is 380 images stacked of Mars. |
