Oct 31, 2005
Tonight was Mars' closest approach for 13 years. We definitely had to get some pictures. It was a Monday night - my astro 10 teaching night, so I'd have to get a late start. But it was also Halloween, and my students were mostly out partying, and I made it to Switchback flat and joined up with Jonathan and Jay. The seeing was not great - we had warm, dry, offshore winds. Jonathan left after some tuning and testing of his telescope setup, leaving Jay and I with the 10" LX200. We traded off mounting our camcorders, with the goal of using Registax to select and stack the best frames for final pictures. I need to climb another learning curve, getting DV footage into my computer without dropping frames. Then I'll post what results. some day...