Telescope Reviews: 2,195x on M57 (& IC 1296) with 13E

Steve,
I use a 30" at 3RF a lot plus the Yard Scope on Larry's List at TSP with Crazy Bob and (I'm only saying this so you know my frame of reference) I agree, you can get some hints of that edge stuff in those scopes. The difference here, of course, is that it is obvious to a greater level and the structural nuances are quite discrete.

Personally, I would try to get a winter night, if possible. The nights are longer (obviously) and the skies are cold and very still. Having said that, this is an extraordinarily great place to observe from most of the year (one reason the observatory is there). Texas has a state light pollution law for a 57 mile radius around the observatory and it is on top of a mountain range in the middle of a desert (thinly populated), so it is dark and the weather is generally pretty stable for astronomy. I go out there a lot to observe, just in general, and I have rarely been disappointed.

This particular group was not one of the "tours" exactly. We have done this before, but basically, we submitted the proposal and had the scope the whole night. So we came with our own list (which we submitted in advance). This was the second time we have done this (last time we had the scope the whole weekend).

Generally speaking, your object lists are going to be focused on things under 5' in size (FOV with a 13E, FYI, is 4'). When you go on one of the tours that they do (which are, typically, half a night), they go from a list of a mix of objects that include the better known (such as the Cats Eye and Stephan's Quintet plus a couple of available planets at the end) to, perhaps, lesser known but interesting objects (Hickson and Abell clusters, for instance). Also, you may look at interesting objects within objects, such as the "eggs" in the Pillars in the Eagle Nebula.

Our lists have been sort of the same thing, though most of us tend toward what are otherwise the really faint and tiny fuzzies, so they can look a lot like Larry's Lists (I love looking at Hickson like stuff, for instance). Basically, this is a 2.1 metre instrument and is meant (visually) to look at things in this category as opposed to the eye candy.

By the way, observing through this really lets you get a great notion as to the dynamic range of the eye. For example, when we were on it for the weekend over a year ago, we looked at M76 towards the end of the evening (this was in winter). I ended up sketching 14 galaxies, around this planetary, that we later found to all be not catalogued in any wavelength (I checked on Aladdin and Simbad and several other references) or in any image I could find.

As a footnote, we did look at Jupiter before we closed up. We had just received notice of the potential impact area just hours before. Unfortunately, because of the weather, we had to button up early, so it was before the strike area had made its way around to facing us.

However, the Galilean moons were disks

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Bic Parker
17.5" f/5 dob
10" f/10 SCT
5" f/8 refractor
80mm f/6 refractor
66mm f/6 refractor
Plus a few others out of the rotation

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