I've had my eye on Jupiter and Saturn coming together all month, and it's been fun to watch with the naked eye. Well, Quirt's mom has been asking and asking about a gift she sent weeks ago and it landed on our doorstep yesterday.

And it's a telescope. Woohoo!

I've had a telescope before, a 6-inch reflector on a Dobsonian mount. The kids and I enjoyed it, but it was really hard to find things with it and we weren't using it much, so I got rid of it when they grew up. This one's smaller--80 mm, so about 3 inches--but, wow, it's easier to use.

It came with a crazy easy system for locating objects, an app-enabled setup where you affix your phone to the tube and tell it you want to see Jupiter. It uses the phone's camera to "look" at the sky and find stars it recognizes, then it tells you how to move the telescope. When it's pointing in the right direction, your phone lets you know. And that's it, other than a few minutes spent making sure your phone, finder scope and main scope are aligned.

I easily found Jupiter, Saturn, and the moon, which I guess isn't such a big deal since they're...you know...right up there where you can see them. But the system still made it easier, since finding something with just the scope is kinda like looking through a drinking straw.

After Quirt and I had enjoyed the flashy sights, I stayed outside and easily found two things I'd never been able to find with the bigger scope--Neptune and Albireo. And that's with terrible conditions. The moon was bright, our neighborhood has streetlights, and rural Oklahoma air isn't as transparent as you'd imagine. I don't think it's smog. I just think that agriculture on the prairie keeps a haze of fine particulates in the air all the time.

So for the those of you who aren't markj or otherwise knowledgeable about astronomy, I'd say, go out and look at the conjunction if you haven't already. It's pretty cool to see them so close together. If you have binoculars, I'd bet they look pretty spectacular. And if you have access to a telescope, you'll probably never see a target so spectacular that's so easy to look at.

I saw all four of Jupiter's large moons, Saturn's rings, the division between the rings and the planet (although not the Cassini division), and some faint banding on Jupiter. I may have seen Saturn's largest moon, but I'm not sure. It was totally worth kneeling in the driveway for an hour or so.

I'm putting my questions for markj in a separate post.

What are some cool things I could see this month with a small telescope and carpy conditions?

Are there any tricks for viewing? I was able to work very easily with the low power eyepiece (25mm), but had a lot of trouble with the smaller field of the 10mm. By the time I got an object centered and focused and the scope stopped shaking, the object was drifting out of range because the dang Earth was turning. The scope came with a Barlow, but I couldn't see how to use it in the dark, so I punted on that.

I also could not figure out how to deal with the fine-tuning rod, which is probably why I was having so much trouble with vibration.

Is there a website for newbies with answers to questions like these?

Serious thread drift, bit perhaps you’ll like this story.

A few years back I dragged the trailer to the middle of Death Valley to serve as a central gathering spot for a large group of Harley Davidson owners. Very remote - 2 hours off of the Interstate - during which time I saw one other car. Crazy country - I need to go back.

The reason we were there was because the nights there are dark - really dark - and the University of Nevada LV - astronomy department - was conducting their final exams at the Death Valley airport. Apparently it’s one of the darkest places in the country.

We stayed in a hotel campground that was super deluxe even though it was in the middle of nowhere. A steak dinner, which the Harley club bought me, was nearly $65. It was solar powered, well watered (deep well) and quite nice in Spring.

At night we would go to the airport, where students would tell us to turn off our lights, lead us to parking and give us red cellophane to put over our flashlights.

I’ve never seen such a sky! Spectacular! Thousands and thousands of stars you just can’t see most places. The students lined each side of the runway, maybe 30 in all. Each had a tracking telescope trained on a particular celestial body and would explain in detail what you were looking at and why it was important.

Later the prof gave a lecture on identifying constellations and it was so dark I swear you could see his laser pointer landing on individual stars. I’ve tried identifying constellations in the past but got stuck after the Big Dipper. After that lecture I’m much more proficient.

I’d like to go back but at this point I’m not sure I’ll get a chance.

That sounds amazing!

There were star parties in Florida that some of my friends went to, but I never had a chance to attend. One of them was quite close, and markj attended it at least once, because he visited me while he was in town.

I did go to a star party in Kentucky when Halley's comet came in 1986. My son was just a toddler, but I thought it would be cool for him to know he'd seen it, so I took him. Even through the scope, it wasn't much to write home about, but they had some others set up. I remember how beautiful the Orion Nebula was.

I took all the kids to the observatory on the UF campus once when Mars was in opposition, and that view was pretty spectacular, too, although not like the Orion Nebula. Even through my modest 6-inch scope, it was jaw-dropping.