I went out from 10PM-1 AM to the Charlie Elliot Astronomy Field. I planned to do a number of new things: - I stopped by Oxford to get the larger Celestron 9.25" SCG telescope.
- I used the resistance dew removal heater, but it drained the battery pretty rapidly, and this forced me to shut down just before 1AM, I think I need to bring 2 battery packs next time.
- I tried out the B-V photometer for the first time. It's a really cool instrument, it can't be connected to the computer because the cable that came with it is the wrong one. Still, it can be used manually, and I got it set up in the telescope and had planned on measuring a lot of stars. I started with bright Arcturus, got a 1 second count of 1275 or so on B, then 375 on V, went to write this down, then before I could move the scope to go to another star, the battery gave out, geesh. This is a 7 year old or so instrument, with the original 'rechargable' battery, their' not so good obviously. Still, the readings for Arcturus are in the range of the expected (ratio of) values, so that's great.
- With the photometer dead, I went back to Saturn. This is the first time I've used this larger scope, and I wanted to see how it performed on Saturn. The images are definitely bigger and better than on the 8" SCG scope, still this scope is heavy, real heavy.
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