Date Time: April 13, 2015 1800-2200hrs
Weather: Mostly clear with some fog coming off the Bay of Fundy, 4C, no wind to slight breeze, lots of dew.
Equipment: Meade 8" LX 200 telescope with 6mm, 12mm 19mm eyepieces and 2x Barlow, solar filter, focal reducer, piggyback attachment for camera, Canon Rebel Xsi with 75-300mm lens, remote shutter control, green light laser and Eds' 10x70 binoculars.
Attendance: Ed O and Myself.
Objective: To image the Venus/M45 conjunction and the Comets Swan F3 and Lovejoy in Cassiopeia.
Report: With solar filter attached, from the deck, the Sun was observed. Approximately 16 individual sunspots could be seen with a group just coming over the SE limb and another huge group in the SE. Some of the sunspots were simply huge!
The scope was moved down to the driveway so that both the Venus/M45 conjunction and the two Comets could both be observed from the same place. This wasn't easy, because both things were low in the sky at this time with many obstacles like trees, power lines, and buildings to try to avoid.
The scope was aligned on Aldebaran which was low in the west.
It didn't get dark until after 2100hrs. At this time, several images of the conjunction were taken.
After this, many images of the sky, to the North East of Cassiopeia were taken. Lovejoy was easy to find, but even after many attempts and scouring the processed images, Comet Swan F3 could not be located.
One shooting star and several Satellites were seen.
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