Sorry it has taken so long to follow up. Health issues and domestic matter (“Where are the photo adapters?”) have absorbed time from fun projects. I’m feeling better now with revised medication for a thyroid issue and my quest to find or buy the missing bits is nearly over.
The main target would be Jupiter with Saturn, Mars and the Moon time permitting. This constrained the choice of scope implicitly. The least obstructed portion of the yard to the South is really just a narrow passageway and the only set up that would fit in that confined area is the VMC110L mounted on the Orion Star Seeker III. It was equipped as usual with the Orion EZ Finder red dot and the Meade 25mm HD60 with 0.5x reducer on the side port of the flip mirror.
The eyepieces were the following selections from the KK Abbe/Orthoscopic set to match the focal lengths from the Starbase series.
KK f(mm)
KK 25 42 41 1.02 2.66
KK 18 42 57 0.87 1.91
KK 12.5 42 83 0.51 1.33
KK 9 42 115 0.36 0.96
KK 6 42 172 0.24 0.64
For the Starbase series (KE is Kellner, OR is Plossl)
KE 25 45 41 1.09 2.66
KE 20 45 52 0.87 2.13
OR 18 45 57 0.78 1.91
OR 14 45 74 0.61 1.49
OR 9 45 115 0.39 0.96
OR 6 45 172 0.26 0.64
The Meade 25mm HD 60 with 0.5x reducer has a 60 degree
The predicted conditions were clear, transparent skies with average (3/5) seeing. Set up complete at 9pm.
First look at Jupiter was a mess. It looked to me like there were tube currents, so I took a pleasant look at M11 for 15 minutes. The Meade
The procedure I followed was to start with the long
Jupiter showed several bands and east to west Ganymede, Europa, Io (which disappeared later in the evening) the Big Guy himself and on the west, Callisto. 2-4 bands were visible. The KE 25 and 20 were indistinguishable in performance from the KK25 and KK18. Contrast was the same and all ghosting and scattered light problems were traceable to my own eyes. This was a pleasant surprise. The surprises kept coming with the OR18 and OR14 which were equal to the KK18 and and KK12.5. The first difference appeared with the OR9. Io disappeared. It was close to doing so anyway so I popped the KK9 back in and it was still there. So the KK9 has a performance edge over the Starbase OR9. The results on the KK6 versus OR6 are not conclusive since the atmosphere was having none of a 0.64 mm exit pupil. The mess was the same though!
I turned my attention to Saturn as Jupiter was getting deeper into the soup. It was pleasant. Seeing was not good enough to make a clean Cassini division. However I often get an optical illusion of Saturn being more of a sphere than a disk and I enjoyed that FWIW.
By this time, it was late enough that the Moon and Mars were visible in the East. I turned to Mars first and could detect surface features. I found I had to hold my eye just so to see contrast since the Moon was washing things out pretty well.
I ran through the same comparison of
I’m still pleased with the Starbase series. For
So I packed it in for the evening….
Hope you continue to feel better as well and things get back on track for you!
