Telescope Reviews: A Towa 60mm night out

Hello everyone,

Yesterday was extremely windy here in New Mexico with blowing dust. When night fell it was still blowing ~15-20mph but calm enough to grab the 60mm scope. Within minutes I had the Towa 60/700mm out the door and setup around the corner of the house to help block the wind. The Towa is my favorite scope and the most used. It has an extremely smooth figured lens so I assembled a setup around it.

My session started a little before 9:00pm local time with Luna high in the sky. Now my 60mm scope does not have a finder, so I used the 32mm Plossl to get the Moon in the FOV. WOW, that's bright! Bringing the image to a sharp focus revealed a spacial body filled with details in shades of whites, grays, and blacks. Beautiful.

Using the 7mm Circle V orthoscopic (100x) I counted 9 craters in Clavius, spied Birt, the Straight Wall, and Rima Birt. Not bad considering all the dust and mediocre seeing. Pushing the scope to 175x (4mm Circle T orthoscopic) revealed a surprisingly sharp image and the same details could be seen but with greater magnification. New minute details flickered in and out as the atmosphere rippled from turbulence. I was now at 74X per inch of aperture! Not bad coming from a MaFl coated objective much older than me.

Algeiba was my next target high overhead to the east of Luna. In went the 32mm Plossl and bingo! Easy find. Popping in the 7mm Circle V orthoscopic brilliantly rendered the golden rich yellow colors of this binary stellar system. I just stared; amazed at the light I was watching was just over 100 years old. Getting brave or crazy, I reached again for the 4mm ortho and kicked up the power and....AMAZING! Perfect airy-disks when seeing would allow with overlapping faint first diffraction rings. The views of binaries don't come better than that.

Saturn was now riding high and demanded attention. I quickly located it with the 32mm Plossl and without delay popped in the 7mm. At 100x two moons were faintly visible. Titan was nowhere to be seen, must have been behind the planet. Seeing was not allowing me to press out much detail other than seeing the rings, where they cross the planetary disk, and two faint bands transversing Saturn. The 4mm orthoscopic was too much magnification tonight for this target.

Next I swung over to Canes Venatici to locate Cor Caroli. This double looks best at low and medium power to me. Colors were hard to determine, perhaps due to all the dust. I saw the primary as a white and the secondary as a dimmer green/gray color. M94 was nearby, but I neglected to observe it as conditions were poor for DSOs. Too much Moon light and dust in the atmosphere tonight.

Mizar and Alcor are two famous stars. Mizar was the first double star to be discovered and photographed. Alcor is just a few light years from Mizar; however, the two stars do not orbit one another even though they are connected. The 7mm eyepiece revealed a stunning image. Mizar easily showing two disks split with vibrant bright white colors. Alcor also showed to be white as well, but indicated itself as a different shade. I use to marvel over these stellar bodies with a ST80 almost every clear night. These were accompanied by purple halos in the 80mm f/5, but tonight in the Towa they shone white.

Last object I pursued was Epsilon Bootis (Izar). Still fairly low in the sky and flickering like a lit candle near an open window made me realize this would not be easy tonight. Using the 32mm Plossl made finding this bright star quick and easy. Switching out this eyepiece with the 7mm orthoscopic revealed a colorful yellowish disk with a first diffraction ring shifting erratically. Patiently I watched this star. This was my first observation of this double for the year, so I could not remember where to look for the secondary. During moments of steadier seeing a grey/blue dot appeared on the first diffraction ring at the 2 o’clock position. Boosting the power to 175x verified that this blob was in fact the secondary component star that I sought. Satisfied with the results I packed up for the night.

Warning: It is considered by some dangerous to observe without "ED" glass and/or an aperture less than 4". Attempting to do so could spark controversy. No telescopes or eyepieces were harmed during this session.