The weather has been typical New England winter weather, but this morning was forecast to be clear so at 5am I headed across the street to Hampton Beach State Park for an hour or so of observing with the XT8i.
The sun was coming up quickly, so it was a race to find and identify two stars for the Orion COL alignment. Polaris was going to be star #2, but I used the good old planisphere to find Spica as star #1. Quickly swing to both stars, don't bother with high powered eyepiece - bingo, warp factor -0.5. Good enough!
Now what to look at in the remaining minutes? I decide to take the tour, but I have to select the April tour since the February tour assumes you are out at a 'normal' time like 9pm. M3 is the first target - wow, I have never seen it before and it's just beautiful even as the sky lightens around it. A globular cluster, clearly visible with the 13mm Hyperion at about 92x.
I tried a few more objects, but none were visible, so I used the scope and COL to identify some stars and begin to learn my way around the constellations. A bright star in Scorpio turned out to be Antares, and above Spica in the west was Arcturus (easy to identify if you can find Ursa Major, the big dipper, using the 'arc to Arcturus' mnemonic.
Now it was really getting light, so time to take a peek at Jupiter, saved for last since it really shines brightly even against a lightening sky. Jupiter is still very low, maybe 15 degrees above the horizon, so there was very little detail visible. I could see a few bands, but mostly the planet's detail was obscured by clearly visible high winds in the atmosphere. However, the Galilean moons were clearly visible, three on one side and on on the other.
After this, I packed up and drove back home, then took Samantha to the beach again for our morning walk.
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