Again last night was very clear. I had only 2 goals last night. The first was to re-observe the Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) in Draco that I had seen the night before and then view Mu Cephei in the Cepheus constellation.
My son Bruce reminded me that we had viewed the Cat’s Eye in 32 inch Dob at Stellafane the month before and the color detail were spectacular. To get there I synced up on a star in Draco and then slewed over to the Cat’s Eye. I had started out with the Nagler 17MM that gave me 60X but I wanted a closer view at 105X. The view was great.
My next target on this short night was Mu Cephei. Over the last few nights I had been reading about the star in two columns in the latest Astronomy magazine. Glenn Chaple’s recommendation was to look at the white star Alpha Cephei first and then go immediately to Mu. This allows for the best comparison and shows just how red Mu is. This was a very pleasing sight.
Just when I though everything was going right I commanded the scope to park from the Hand Controller panel of Autostar. I though the scope was taking a little too long to park and looked over at it. The scope was headed down below the horizon and the only way I could stop it was to turn off the mount. It had been working fine up until then.