Observing Log for Mike Durkin 12/26/2018 9:00PM-11:00PM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 2-8/10, Seeing 3/5 Temperature: about 30-40 degrees Equipment: Hutech modified DSLR and Bower 500mm lens Testing out the shoe mounted red dot finder for the DSLR with the 500mm lens. It seemed to work reasonable well in that it would get me close to the the target location, but I still had to hunt around a little bit. I also have to make sure that all the screws are tightened when using, otherwise the red dot can vary it's position by a degree or two. After that I tried to see if I could image the Flaming Star nebula region with the 500mm lens. I had to give up because of clouds, but I am not sure I would have been able to. The stars were elongated, but I don't know if it was due to tracking issues or was it some abberations with the Bower lens, which is very picky about being in focus. I will have to try again at a later date. 12/7-8/2018 11:30PM-1:00AM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 9/10, Seeing 3/5 Temperature: about 25-30 degrees Equipment: 10x50 binoculars First tried to find comet 46P/Wirtanen. I used the Sky Safari app to see where it was supposed to be. Using the binoculars I definitely was a faint patch that was just skightly brighter than the background. I may try to photograph this tomorrow. Then I visually measured that variable stars Z Eri, W Ori and Mira. Other Log Entries <-- 2017 Jan  Feb  Mar  Apr   May   Jun  Jul  Aug  Sep  Oct  Nov  Dec   2019 -->