Jul 202011
This Unexpected Flying Organism visited the observatory last evening while I was setting up. It was quite startling as I was looking at the cloud cover on the All Sky Cam when the close encounter occurred. As soon as I opened the door to get a better view, the visitor left without attempting further contact.
The All Sky Cam is proving to be very useful. It is much more sensitive than normal vision both in daylight ( the haze here can make the sky very bright ) and at night. For example, last night,after the visitation, I was taking some alignment images. At one point the tracking got very erratic. A glimpse outside showed nothing, but the camera view showed a small band of very thin cloud had just passed.