Tonight Jim and I were delighted to accept an invitation from Les to come visit his roll-off observatory. Overlooking the Grand River, the shed offers dark skies and a welcome shelter to observe from.
Setting up his very fine 4″ refractor, Les showed us the Orion Nebula through a variety of eyepieces, with some pleasing and surprising results. It’s amazing how well the inexpensive eyepieces compared to the premium oculars! We continued our tour of the sky with some winter highlights, like the Pleiades, the double cluster and M35, as well as views of Mars with its polar cap and Saturn and its moons Titan, Rhea, Dione and Tethys. Algieba in Leo and Polaris provided some fine double star targets. Algieba showed a bright yellow primary with a more rusty companion star. Through a no-name eyepiece the colours seemed more pronounced than through a Pentax. The ISS also went right overhead to make the evening complete.
Les and his wife fed us with a great assortment of meats and vegetables (and some deliscious strawberries) to keep our strength up. Both Jim and I were very impressed with the clever and ingenious way Les has put together and runs his backyard observatory, and we were delighted to take advantage of his hospitality and dark skies. Thanks, Les!
