August New Moon

Posted by Josh Walawender on Mon 30 August 2021

I got out for a short observing session this past weekend. Only a few hours of darkness were available after twilight ended, but it turned out to be a worthwhile trip up the mountain. I went to the end of the Mauna Loa Access Road in order to get above the clouds. The parking lot up there had several vehicles, so I turned around and found a reasonably flat pullout at about 10,500 feet elevation.

Conditions were excellent. There was no wind and the seeing was great. This meant I spent most of the evening on Jupiter and Saturn. Saturn was lovely with lots of detail visible on the planet, shading in the rings at different radii. The C ring was visible as well as hints of grooves in the rings during moments of good seeing. The main problem I had was that I was using a mount without tracking. The slow motion controls on the AZ100 make it reasonably easy to keep things centered, but when you're pushing 400x (2-4mm Nagler Zoom eyepiece at 3mm), tracking would have really helped.

Jupiter was gorgeous as well. There were no Jovian Moon events and the Great Red Spot was not visible, but the details on the planet were as good as I'd ever seen them. I could see two small dark storms in Jupiters clouds and lots of details in the belts and zones.

With good seeing, I stopped by the Cat's Eye Nebula and the M15 globular cluster to enjoy the views. I worked my way through 9 NGC galaxies in Pegasus, but I kept going back to Jupiter and Saturn as they rose -- three lengthy visits in total. When not enjoying the planetary views, I spent a good amount of time just doing some naked eye stargazing. The summer Milky Way was arcing overhead, so that was also a really lovely sight. Shortly before 11pm, the eastern horizon began to glow presaging moonrise, so I packed up and headed home.