Daylight Observing

As expected, nothing to see here, move along from last night. I spent a few minute here and there wistfully gazing out the window, hoping against hope, that the clouds might have dispersed somewhat, but to no avail. Never mind.

Today, I've picked up a tutorial on using levels in Photoshop to tweak astro image, so that something I'll need to have a play with. Going to go back to all the old pictures and see what happens with this.

Lunchtime rolled around and, what's this I see, can it truly be... blueness in the air, and shadows cast across the ground. A quick glance out of a window that has a view (the one by my desk looks out onto a wall, and there is only a thin sliver of sky viewable upwards) confirms this. Not only that, but I can see, faintly some of La Lune just over half full staring back. Right thinks eye, grabbing the bull, and for the matter the scope, by the horns, dropping in an ep (5mm ortho) I dashed outside. Here I realised one of the downsides to an RDF. They are impossible to use during the day when the sun is shining. You just can't see the red dot.

I feel I should point out that the sun was at my back, and the scope was pointing in the other direction... so there was no risk of directly viewing the sun without a filter (which I don't have).

The FOV on the 5mm ortho is just too small to find anything except by a massive excess of blind luck without the finder. So I popped back inside (one of the benefits of daytime viewing, all the white lights in the house can't mess up dark adaptation) and swapped to the Hyperion (wonderful ep, just so easy to use, want more!!!). Using the Hyperion, finding La Luna was oh so much easier. Now, seeing her was more difficult than at night, although the view was nowhere near as dazzling. I could make out some of the craters, no chance of being able to determine any of them, as the magnification was too low, and unfortunately I didn't have enough time to spend more than about 10 minutes on this little exercise, in total, as I really had to get back to work. Still, having said that, I will attempt this again and spend far longer observing (when conditions are right and the sun is in another part of the sky of course) and hopefully make more of the opportunity for some lunar study.