Telescope Reviews: ETX-80 and a pair of clusters

Well, this weekend wasn't what I had hoped for, but I made due. I'd spent all week looking forward to a local star party that was supposed to happen at a local park, but the weather didn't co-operate. Saturday night/Sunday morning it was supposed to be partly cloudy with clearing after midnight. Instead it remained overcast with clearing at around 3 AM. Needless to say the star party didn't happen. So...I made the best of it. I woke up at around 3:30AM and saw that it was clear, so I brought the little ETX out to see if I could track down a few clusters. The air was cool (the mid 50's), with 90% humidity but surprisingly only very light dewing. Winds were calm.

I carried the scope out to the dark part of the yard, and noticed that tonight the yard was lit up more then normal. Usually I have 2 homes' porch lights to contend with plus a street lamp. Tonight I had 4 houses in a row with their porch lights on, all shining directly into my back yard. I really long for the days when as a kid I only had one street lamp to contend with and that was it [sigh].

Anyway...time to do the alignment. This was a bit of a pickle as few bright stars were visible from the dark part of the yard. I ended up settling on Capella and Aldebaron...not ideal given their proximity but it was the best I could do, as it turns out it was enough. The first alignment failed as I accidentally hit a wrong button. I redid it and this time I had a bit of clutch slippage...the Astronomy gods are not with me tonight....(either that, or it's because I just woke up ). On my third attempt all went as it should. The scope slewed to Aldebaron first and got it in the FOV on the first try. Capella was a little out of the FOV but a little hunting got it there.

First target was NGC7789. I'd read about this cluster and saw it in photos and it sounded like a nice target. I told the Autostar to slew there and had a look through the eyepiece...where is it? Instead of a cluster I saw a faint smudge of light that looked like a galaxy. At first I thought that maybe there was a small error in slewing but I decided to check out that smudge before searching. (After all, the smudge was almost dead center in my FOV). The size seemed right (NGC7789 is supposed to measure 16' in diameter); I replaced the 26mm with the 9.7mm. There it was! So, the little ETX had gotten it right after all! The faint smudge had resolved into a myriad of faint points of light...interesting, but not what I had expected. This is one cluster that would certainly look better in a larger scope or under darker skies.

Next stop was the Pleiades (there were other clusters in Cassiopeia I wanted to check out, but I decided to swing over to M45 first while I planned which ones so that the scope wouldn't be pointed straight up, lest my observing session be cut short due to dew). I slewed over to M45, popped in the 26mm EP and had a look. Magnificent! This is the cluster this little scope was made for, as I could just fit the entire cluster into the FOV. I spent nearly half an hour on this cluster alone, just enjoying the different shapes and patterns I could make out, watching dimmer members wink in and out of view between direct and inverted vision and also noticing a few optical(?) doubles within the cluster.

When I finally decided it was time to move on, I glanced up and to my horror noticed a solid bank of clouds was closing in quickly. I had hoped that maybe this would be a passing band of clouds, so I closed my observing eye and went to the front yard to have a look...no such luck...the cloud pack was solid clear to the horizon. So much for the weather forecast (clearing and sunny the next day...it ended up being overcast all day today).

So, with my observing session cut short, I headed inside. It wasn't a total loss...I'd observed a new target for the first time (NGC 7789), and revisited a cluster (M45) that I hadn't really looked at in many, many years. I'm looking forward to showing my wife the Pleiades, it's her favorite astronomical sight (in her country they call it the Rosary). I'll just have to wait until next time to catch those other clusters.....

Craig