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Tom Trusock
Reged: 02/26/02
Posts: 27427
Loc: Alternate Reality (TM)
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ZNELM was in excess of 6.4 at my site last night, the transparency was supurb (all the way down to the horizon - pulled out the Bug Nebula no problems late in the evening, when it was just a few degrees off the deck), and the seeing was great! Terrific night! I'll write a more detailed report later, but I just had to convey some of my excitement.
We hit about 30 targets (mostly non-messier), but the highlights were undoubtedly the Ring and Cat's Eye.
I need to get a shorter FL eyepiece or buy another barlow. The nagler zoom was used at 3mm (635x) on both the Ring and Cat's Eye last night to excellent effect, and the 10" f7.5 could have *easily* taken more.
The Ring is *absolutly* *unbelievably* amazing at that power. I've never seen it like that before, in any size scope, and it's one of my favorite objects. Incredible night.
What a night!! Once again, the zoom has proven it's use. Thank you Al Nagler for crafting such wonderful eyepieces. I could never have kept my non-tracking truss on target at those magnifications while changing eyepieces. As it was, given the smooth motions of the structure (thank you Rob Teeter!) and the flexibility of the zoom, not only was I able to easily *hand* track at those powers (in an eyepiece with a 50 AFOV), I was able to also easily share the scope with another observer!
more later
Tom T.
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There are two theories to arguing with my wife. Neither one works.
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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Sounds like you had as good of a night as I did last night. Tell me, can you resolve the center star in the Ring? It is also one of my favorite objects and the very first deep sky object I ever saw in my 90mm so many years ago.
The sky in my neck of the woods was unbelievably clear as well after a cold front swept the atmosphere clean.
I looked at about 20 targets last night and they never looked finer.
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Tom Trusock
Reged: 02/26/02
Posts: 27427
Loc: Alternate Reality (TM)
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At 635x using averted vision, another amateur and myself decided that we could see it about 20% of the time.
Before this, I had only seen it in a 16".
Tom T.
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There are two theories to arguing with my wife. Neither one works.
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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I'm going on a galaxy hunt in Virgo tonight. I've tried to reposition the scope in my front yard for the best view.
I still think the trees will be partially in the way and by the time it's absolutely dark it will have set behind them.
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Tom Trusock
Reged: 02/26/02
Posts: 27427
Loc: Alternate Reality (TM)
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Good luck! What scope are you using?
Tom T.
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There are two theories to arguing with my wife. Neither one works.
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EdZ
Professor EdZ
Reged: 02/15/02
Posts: 12601
Loc: Cumberland, R I , USA42N71.4W
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If Virgo gets a little too low under the trees for you, shift your focus up slightly to Coma Berenices and Canes Venatici. There is a few nice bright galaxies there also. Try for ngc4565 just east of 17 Coma. Then move north and tyr 5005 about 2 to 3° SE of aCnV-Cor Coroli. Stop and take in both of those double stars before you jump to the galaxies. While your at 5005, your right near M63 and M94. That 26mm ep might do pretty well on Coma (maybe not quite wide enough fov).
edz
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Teach a kid something today. The feeling you'll get is one of life's greatest rewards.
member#21
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Anonymous
Unregistered
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I was using my new 6" LXD55 achro.
Thanks for the tip. I appreciate it. Autostar failed on me tonight and because of the time spent trying to get it working again I missed out on most of what I wanted to see tonight.
I did catch M64 and M100. Good views of both. Most of Virgo had set so I shifted around to Scorpius and caught a look at M4 and manually slewed to NGC 6144. It was very small, but the 26mm resolved some of the stars. M19 and M62 were the last two objects I saw tonight. I was too frustrated with the Autostar failure to really get into observing tonight.
It appears that the computer functions as it should, but you can't tell where you are within the menus because the display is blank. If it hadn't been for the fact that it failed (the last time) while viewing Messier objects, I would have been lost in the menu. I manually (by hand) slewed the scope around a bit and caught several other objects in Scorpius, but I was so P.O.'ed I called it a night about 0030.
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