Telescope Reviews: Light Cup First Pilgrimage

Having never been away from the comfort of home, having been put off by weary work, wrecking weather and mortal Moon for the past 3 months, my 4" TV-102 Light Cup saw an opening tonight (05/28/03). Weather forecast is calling for a thunderstorm later this week! I hurried pack up, grab the charts and head for Mt. Laguna, reputed to be the
mecca of deep sky observers, sitting loftly at 6000 ft. ;-). Never afraid of lions, tigers and bears but fearful of the "2-legged beast", my Light Cup asked me to pack my father-in-law's machete just in case. What do you know; it has a nice swing with the wrist ;-)! What a pain, what a pain for the lazy type like me :-(.

The 4" TV-102 is so nicely designed for astro-commuting with its nice hard case, so light. But you know what, the @#$%^&* SP EQ mount was so heavy! 45 minutes later we arrived and found a nice spot about 50ft from the road. I drove into the spot with my truck and setup the Light Cup near it (and you know near what ;-). The @#$%^&* took
so long to setup as I was fumbling with the assessories tray screws :-(. When everytime was ready and quick RA axis polar aligned, I realized I had forgotten one of my most important accessory: my Starbound chair :-(. At 9pm we're good and ready as can be. Oh, the trees - I have to move the scope around several times :-(.

Guess which was the first object up to be slaughtered by the Light Cup ;-)? Why the old arch nemesis, Leo I a dwarf galaxy in Leo! What is this? Another failure :-(, the darn galaxy still make a dwarf out of my Light Cup :-(. I noticed then that the sky wasn't much better than my backyard :-( and sure enough the LM around Leo I was only mag 5.7! What a disappointment! I was thinking of calling it a quit but decided to continue down the list anyway. The western sky and part of the northern sky seems to have sky glow :-(.

M51 was next. Umm, the view seems a bit better and brighter than from my mag 5.7 backyard. At 110x (8mm Radian), the core of M51 is much brighter than the core OF its companion, NGC 5195. The mag 13.5 star inside the galaxy could be seen even at this low magnification! At
73x (12mm Radian) and 110x, I caught a glimpse of the bridge. At 100x, the slosh surrounding the core of M51 seems to have uneven brightness (something I've never seen from my backyard). I check the LM and it was mag 6.0 - oooh nice!

I've been trying to see the eyes in the Owl (M97) for sometime now but never succeeded from my backyard. Wow, 73x with O-III filter brought out the eyes with averted vision! Not seen at lower or higher magnification, interestingly enough. UHC filter was no help.

The Black Eye Galaxy (M64) gave my Light Cup a black eye last year :-( as it wasn't quite sure it saw the feature. Tonight it was seen with averted vision at 73x (but not at 44x, 110x or 146x) and looked like a dark eye shadow underneath the core. I later checked and it looked
very close to Sue French's sketch in the May 2002 S&T issue of the Small Scope Sampler!

Likewise, the Sunflower Galaxy (M64) bloomed tonight. It actually has sort of a frost on a window pane look at 73x and 110x with direct and averted vision. It looked similar to Tom's Polakis sketch (only the central portion and dimmer). I could never be sure I saw this from my backyard.
www.psiaz.com/polakis/drawings/drawings.html

Finally, the 2nd 4-inch public enemy number one, the lucifer deep sky object for all 4-inch telescope owners :-(. You would not believe how many times my Light Cup tried to catch this elusive NGC 6118 galaxy from my backyard last year. Indeed, it is reputed to be the most difficult object in the H400 list. Thus, the Light Cup considered
NGC 6118, the Herschel 400 Admission Test. Tonight at 6000 ft with the LM of 6.1 (yeepie - never saw 6.1 from my backyard before and I bet maybe even darker as I didn't print value for dimmer stars :-(), the Light Cup was uncertain at 44x (20mm TV Plossl). At 73x, I had
to look long and hard, very evident when slewing back and forth and there it was, an extremely dim smudge just to the side of the a very dim star GSC 5038:384. I made a sketch of the very dim stars nearby and here are the following seen at 73x and 110x: GSC 5039:100, GSC 5039:500, GSC 5038:206 (this one is quite dim), GSC 5038:734, and
GSC 5038:435. I wonder if anyone has accurate magnitude figures for this star (thanks)? 110x was nice but best at 73x. I can now see why it was so hard from my backyard. It was just slightly brighter than the background sky and the background sky at Mt. Laguna tonight was dark - darker than my backyard ever. So this one would have been
impossible from my backyard, no way no how ;-).

Onward to M13. At 293x (3mm Radian), it was so majestic, snuggly filling the entire FOV. One the western side of the core remained unresolved. Too many stars to count. The propeller was detected at 220x (4mm Radian) and it really look 3D like at 110x, 146x (6mm Radian) and 176 (5mm Radian). It sure looks a lot brighter than from my backyard. I did notice then how much darker the sky on the
mountain top. More of the Milky Way was seen and seen brighter as well.

Suddenly, I seem to be seeing more and more stars naked eye, mag 7, mag 8, mag 9. But this is impossible! The Light Cup told me to quickly wrap it up as I was now in the early stages of oxygen deprivation ;-). Back on the road, the Light Cup was flexing its objective "muscle" as it seems to have grown into a 5" APO ;-). It commanded me to stop at the Mt. Laguna Observatory (we were only a mile away) to do a shoot out with the 40-inch reflector ;-). I
convenient missed the entrance roadway ;-). Speaking of the
observatory, I was hoping that Mt. Laguna would be the "Anderson Mesa of California" and I sure did not see a mag 8 star naked eye :-(. BTW, the info on the observatory stated that "the sky brightness at the zenith in the Johnson B filter averages 22.8 magnitudes per square arcsecond." I wonder if this is dark enough.

So how did I like astro-commuting? First let me say that I now admire those who astro-commute to the dark skies. I really admire those who go regularly, especially those with "big bad bucket" like a 20-incher! Being the lazy type, I hate astro-commuting. I abhored having to
haul around the heavy EQ mount (interestingly it never weighs so much from my living room to my backyard ;-). I loathed the anxiety every time a car/truck drove pass by. Most of all, I execrated the long 45 minutes drive home **afterward**! And oh, it was very painful without the chair!

But I do like astro-commuting! Look at the nemesis my Light Cup slaughtered, which would have been slaughtered instead from my backyard and the many features I just wouldn't have seen from my backyard! Pluto, we're looking at you kid ;-). Seasoned observers talked about diffraction limited, aperture limited, etc. My Light
Cup sees a new kind of limit: "locale limited" ;-). Ok, well, maybe my lazy type will let me astro-commute only once in a while. For sure I can use that Unistar Light mount!

Thanks for reading a lot of this nonsense :-(.

Ron B[ee]

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5-inch Tele Vue NP127 APO

4-inch Tele Vue TV-102 APO

8-inch f/6 Discovery PDHQ Dob