Oh man, is it a beautiful night or what?! It’s 72 degrees outside, light to no wind, no moon, as dark a sky as we get around here… stunning.

It’s 10:45pm on a Thursday night and I just aligned my scope. I am getting ready to do some imaging of Saturn and try my hand at image stacking. I’ve gotten a few good single images of Saturn previously but the benefit that stacking gives is way too enticing to not learn how to do it. I’m inside writing this post while I wait for my camera battery to charge! Let that be a lesson to me: charge the battery before a night of imaging! A step further… get another battery. Anyhow, while I was aligning the scope, I actually snapped a few good pictures of Polaris and Mizar – both popular double star systems. On the preview screen of the camera they looked pretty cool but we’ll have to wait and see how they actually turn out. That is one thing I really want to do is start a catalog of images of double star systems. Hey, maybe these will be the first entries!

Anyhow… man, I cannot get over how nice it is outside right now. You can’t even feel the air. Low humidity and practically no bugs – BOTH of which are a rarity in Ohio. Speaking of which… it’s time to go see if I can get some good images out of this evening. Wish me luck!