It was an unexpectedly, partly, clear night. After a night and morning of terrible heavy rain and strong winds persisting through out the day. It was a welcome sight to see clear skies after such weather.
I decided to stay at home and have some fun with my equipment. I was in the mood for double star observing and for a long time now I wanted to properly use my laptop and Starry Night Pro to control my mount and make observing those hard to find double stars easy to observe.
Seeing = 3
Transparency = 2
Location = Home
Equipment = EQ6 Pro, 4" Refractor, Laptop and Starry Night Pro 6
Start Time = 23:12
Sheliak = A nice triple system, all of a similar colour. I always meant to observe this as it's a star that famous to me through Star Trek: The Next Generation.
17 Cygni = A very tight double which was a pleasure to observe. The 8mm eyepiece just managed to split this.
Finish = 23:44
In typical Irish weather fashion the weather decided it would be a brilliant time to cloud over while I was observing my second object. The night end far, far sooner than I had expected but it was time well spent getting my laptop and mount setup, configured and teaching myself how to used it correctly.
As always when you try to use technology there will always be problems to over come and spending time on getting this all set up did use up a lot of valuable clear skies time. At least now I know what is involved and how to troubleshoot any connectivity problems that can occur so future setups like this should only take a few minutes.
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