OBSERVING REPORT FOR JUNE 26, 2017

Location:  Front Yard, Little Lepreau, NB, Canada

Date Time:  June 26, 2017 2250-2450 hrs

Weather:  Mostly clear, cool, 7C, no wind to slight breeze, dewy, a few bugs.

Attendance:  Myself.

Equipment:  Canadian Telescopes 80 ED/APO on vixen motorized mount, 19mm eyepiece.  Cellphone camera attached to eyepiece.  Canon Rebel Xsi attached to telescope at prime focus.

Objective:  To learn how to operate a new to me motorized mount for telescope.  To search for Comet Johnson which was suppose to be around mag 8 and in between constellations Libra and Virgo.

Report:

• After practicing inside for a while, set up in front yard once it got dark enough.  After one failed attempt at aligning scope, tried again then got it.  Mount worked fantastic at finding and then tracking objects, although I mainly stayed in SW sky whole time.
• GoTo easily found M3 and M5.  Both globular clusters showed up brightly in 19 mm eyepiece, with M5 very close to a bright star.
• Searched for Comet Johnson around a bright star, in-between Virgo and Libra but couldn't find it.  Telescope may have been too small.  Comet was nicely placed though, high enough in the SW sky to make it easy to train scope on.
• Located Jupiter, then imaged and videoed the gas giant.  Could only see two moons, one on either side.
• Located and then imaged M5 with Canon Rebel.  Many imaged were taken in hopes of being able to stack them.

• No shooting stars and a few satellites were seen.

Images to follow...