Telescope Reviews: My homemade Mk II Right Angle is built!

I finally got around to some dark sky observing in the 13X50 mode (using the 13mm Ethos eyepieces.) For the entire session I had the bino tripod-mounted.

Last night was nicely clear and reasonably dry, but not as nice as a week ago (when I was in 7X50 mode.) The SQM read 21.2, which is 10% brighter than the more common 21.3 found at the observatory. (This leads me to suspect that last Friday's sky surely would have been 21.4, if not a tad better.) In any case, the Gegenschien was easily seen, however averted imagination would have been required to see the fainter zodiacal band extending eastward toward the Pleiades.

Early on I'd installed the Orion Ultrablock filters and visited lots of emission nebulae. Some highlights:

- The Pelican revealed the dark feature which separates the 'bill' from the 'body'.

- The fainter southern portion of the generally circular form which includes the N. America/Pelican complex was also seen. I forget the catalog designations, but I seem to recall that one of the three objects in this sizeable arc is IC 5068 (??).

- In the Veil nebula, the eastern section (NGC 6992) revealed structure, especially the hooked bifurcation at the southern end. The sharp, scimitar-like north end of the western section (NGC 6960) was not too difficult to make out, and Pickering's Wisp was not difficult either.

- The small, circular Sh2-112, just to the west of Deneb was faint but certain.

- The Crescent nebula, NGC 6888, a shell surrounding a Wolf-Rayet star, was even visible *without* filtration. But even with the filters installed it was a shapeless blob, the magnification being too low to resolve the rather narrow width of the arc.

Later I removed the filters in order to ferret out some reflection nebulae:

- In the SW part of Perseus OB2 complex is located the small, circular nebula NGC1333. I had first found this one a couple of years ago with my 26x100, and was more than a bit surprised to catch it with half the aperture *and* magnification, and not remembering exactly where to look.

- The Flaming Star nebula, surrounding the runaway star AE Aurigae, was even more definite than it appeared last Friday at 7X, mainly because of the higher magnification, which more than compensated for the approx. 0.2 magnitude brighter sky.

- The Merope nebula, in the Pleiades, was quite definite.

As to penetrating power, I did an 'after action' analysis to get an idea of the achievable magnitude limit. Some datum points:

- The illuminating star of NGC 1333 is mag. 10.6. It was quite easily seen directly.

- The rich open cluster NGC 7789 was partially resolved. Checking some of its several brightest stars indicated that I was seeing to 11.0 pretty certainly, and possibly 11.2.

- Open cluster M37 was also partly resolved, and suggests a similar magnitude limit as for NGC 7789.

On balance, I'm sure that I was seeing 11.0m stars, and possibly to 11.2m.

--------------------
Home-made 11X50 right angle bino, 8.1 deg. FOV
Modified 26X100 bino, 3.5 deg. FOV
Home-made Mk II RA bino, using interchangeable objectives and eyepieces

My Gallery

Mediocre minds discuss people. Good minds discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas.