1 October 2004

Observing Location	TotL
Atmospheric Conditions	Clear Skies Clock said it was supposed to be a great night but we didn't find it to be so. The temperature was not bad but there was more haze than had been forecast so the dimmer stars were not showing up as well as I was hoping.
Instruments	Canon 15x50 Image Stabilized binoculars - Charlie Tele Vue TV76 - Ben 10" Teleport - Peter
Observing Party	Charlie Ridgway Ben Cacace Peter Tagatac

On setting up my binoculars I found that all the stars had tails on them like everything in the sky was a comet. I have had trouble on other occasions getting the binoculars to focus properly and later in the evening the batteries have died. It appears that this is an early warning sign of imminent battery failure with the Canon Image Stabilized binoculars. The association between the problem and the cause was not something that was immediately obvious since I had the binoculars on the tripod and was not using the image stabilization at the time. The binoculars must sense the low battery state even when they are turned off and move the prism out of the correct location. Installing new batteries and turning the image stabilization on and then off has corrected the problem in all cases.

Target	M103 and NGC
Time	1Oct04; 2130 EDT
Category	Deep Space Objects
Comments	Peter and I observed both objects in my binoculars and agreed that what we had previously identified as these objects was indeed correct.

Target	Moon
Time	1Oct04; 2200 EDT
Category	Moon
Comments	I made too few notes at the time waited too long to make this entry into the blog to remember what we saw specifically but do remember some nice features over near the terminator near the left limb.

Target	NGC1647
Time	2Oct04; 0134 EDT
Category	Deep space Objects
Comments	This is another one that I saw but don't remember what I saw. My notes simply say that we compared views in Peter and Ben's scopes.