We went out at about 5 AM this morning as Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and Venus were all supposed to be out. We got decent peeks at Jupiter and Saturn, and then took a peak at Venus before packin it in. The moon also rose just before we left, so we slewed over to it, too. Saturn and Jupiter both had 4 moons in sight, and through the 40 mm eye piece (only one we've got right now) we could make out some different tones on Jupiter and Saturn.
As long as I had it with me I strapped my D100 to the scope and got a couple blurry shots. It was kinda windy, and the scope never really settled. Couple this with the fact that even at ISO 800 shutter speeds were at, or less than 1/125 sec = blurry.
Anyhow, here's a couple examples - a crude starting point to improve upon (I think I see a CCD camera in our future). Oh, and a surprising fact I hadn't anticipated: the low elevation of the moon, in particular, revealed a lot of heat rising from the ground. I wouldn't have guessed this would be the case with temps in the low 20's, but I suppose all those furnaces running in all those buildings below all that air we had to look through added up to a fair amount of roiling air. Still kind of cool - reality is what it is, no point in hating it, just deal with it, right?
Saturn (cropped down from full frame - prime focus on C11)
Moon (full frame from Nikon D100 - prime focus on C11)
