December 15th 2007, Lubbock, TX (In my backyard)

I've been trying for the past week or so to collminate my Celestron C8, tonight I finally got it done. I was having problems finding a good procedure, I finally found one on Astromart Ed's Guide to SCT Collmination. I was trying to get a high magnification for viewing Mars, tonight I succeded and saw some good details with both the Meade UWA 6.7mm and the Televue 10mm Radian, I used a Meade #25A Red filter with both. I saw 3 dark areas, they might have been one big area that was lighter in the middle. The areas were located about half way out from the center at the 10, 2 and 6 oclock positions, the one at the 2 oclock position was a little narrower and longer than the other two areas.

I tried some new clothing tonight, an insulated ski overalls, thinsulate glove/mitten combo, the glove part has the top of the fingers missing and a mitten part flips over to cover the exposed fingers that way I can handle my eyepieces with my fngers and then cover them up with the mitten part when I'm observing. I also had on my new Cabela's 1000g Thinsulate boots. It was 24F with a windchill of 18F and I was as warm as toast. I stopped a little after midnight.