A Look at Cassiopeia

It was clear, not too windy, and not too cool tonight (64°F) so I thought I'd set up the ETX-70 in the backyard observatory. I picked weeds and swept the dirt off the bricks, set up my rickety pedestal, leveled it, set up the furniture, and set down to business. I decided to try for the double Eta Cas which was featured in Oct S&T. Cassiopeia is in a nice position for my backyard right now. I thought for awhile that my neighbor's new satellite dish was going to block Polaris and ruin my ability to find north but Polaris was well above the obstacle. I got lined up ok and used Shedir as my alignment star. A little hunting around and checking star fields convinced me I had the right bright light in my eyepiece so I centered up on Eta Cas. Next I put in my 10mm ep and recentered. Still just one star, so I added the 2x barlow. It takes quite a bit of turning of the focus knob to bring things into focus. I need to get a focus extender or electric focuser! I got it all working together which gives me about 70x ((350/10)*2) and thought I had Eta split into a red and blue pair but decided later that it was just an artifact of my eyeball's fancy multifocal lenses. Any bright star looked like a double! I may have to resign myself to not being able to observe doubles very well, other than really wide pairs, at least with the ETX. Things are a bit better with my dob. While I had 70x installed, I decided to slew over to Jupiter and almost gave up trying to find it. I discovered that I can insert my 25mm ep, get the fuzzy blob image of Jupiter centered, then put the 70x assembly back in the tube and voila! A nice big, clear Jupiter! Both storm bands were crystal clear and all four moons (3 on left, one on right) were plainly visible. I played around a bit more with Cassiopeia awhile before it got too cool and I went in about 8:15. All in all, a nice night without too much frustration.