Location: Anza desert site,
Equipment: Celestron 9.25” Edge HD
Another fine day in Southern California. To share with you a bit of spring mood, here is a pic of our orange tree blossoms with bees buzzing around. What a welcome sight!
The desert is drab this year but can’t beat the cool dry weather. No summer heat yet.
Binoviewer setup
Upon arrival to Anza and setting the camp I had an hour to play with binoviewers. This time managed to get them to focus with 150ST. This is a popular scope, been offered over the years by Celestron and Skywatcher, and my Orion binoviewer is a mass-produced design, rebranded by many companies (Orion, Celestron, William Optics, Stelarvue, etc.). So, I figured that this configuration might be of interest to others.
The light train shown in the pic below consists of
I suspect that Baader T2 prism could be substituted by any other 1.25” prism. Next time I will test 2” mirror and prism diagonals, because I think that ‘35mm extension tube-Baader T2 prism’ combo could be substituted with either of those. Another thought is that if you still have the stock focuser you may not need the 35mm extension, just the T2 or 1.25” prism (maybe mirror) diagonal and the barlow nosepiece. I still need to figure out the factor of the barlow nosepiece. I suspect it is in 1.2-1.3x range.
I run out of daylight and did not have a chance to play with Edge 9.25”
V1405 Cas Nova
Next on my list was V1405 Nova in Cassiopeia. At dusk it was already too low for the scopes. I went to higher ground and tried with 15x70 binos. Anza site has nice dark skies down to horizon to the east. However, lower portions to the south, west and in particular north are compromised by light domes. Finding the spot was easy using M52 as a reference. I couldn’t however pinpoint the exact nova location because some of the reference stars were lost in the light pollution. When I came home and checked EathSky wide field photo, I realized that I saw the nova but mistaken it for a field star because it was brighter than expected. Hopefully, I get another go to confirm.
By 20:30 the sky got that dark ‘galaxy-ready’ tone. My last session was when the galaxies went in hiding. Most of the targets were barely resolved as averted vision glow. This evening they came out to play with shapes well defined and for most I was able to resolve some structural features. Hunting them was pure joy.
Hydra galaxies (all observed with the Edge 9.25”)
Sextans galaxies (all observed with the Edge 9.25”)