OBSERVING REPORT FOR APRIL 15, 2016

Location:  Lower West Side Saint John, NB, Canada

Date Time:  April 15, 2016 2120-2200hrs AST

Weather:  Very windy, Clear, 1C with windchill of -6C.  A long stretch of relatively nice weather has allowed for succesive night observing, which has been a rarity since last fall.

Attendence:  Ed O and Myself

Equipment:  Canadian Telescopes 80mm ED/APO on a Vixen Alt/AZ mount and Canon Rebel Xsi with 18-55mm lens on a tripod.

Objective:  To view and image Mercury, the Moon and Jupiter.

Highlights:

• Ed and I easily found Mercury over the Paper Mill, low in the West, showing up as a fairly bright star, just after evening twilight.  Ed commented on how high up it was.
• A satellite was observed heading North through the Big Dipper.  Ursa Major was upside down and over polaris, high in the NNE.
• Telescope was used to view the Moon.  
• Jupiter was halfway up in the sky, in the SSE.  It was very close to a fairly bright star in Leo.  Ed and I both noted how close it was to the star, at first glance, through the telescope the star looked like one of Jupiters Moons.
•  In the telescope, with 32mm eyepiece, three of its Moons showed up.  With higher magnification of the 4mm eyepiece the fourth Moon was very close to the gas giant.  Looked for a shadow on Jupiters' disk, but didnt see one.

Images:

Looking West at 2120hrs.

Note one of Jupiters Moons are very close to it, on the right side in the image

Cropped, close-up image of Jupiter